Stress, Weathering, And Blood-Based Biomarkers Of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Longitudinal Study of Low Income, Aging African Americans

Project Summary

Principal Investigators:  Steven R. H. Beach, Michelle Mielke
Funding Agencies: NIA
Project Period: 2022 – 2027

This study is an expansion of CFR’s Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), a unique 25-year ongoing study of physical and psychosocial well-being among several hundred African American families, to investigate the extent to which a variety of social and economic stressors, lifestyle and genetic factors, rate of aging, and chronic illness impact trajectories of AT(N) biomarkers. The few extant African American dementia studies use samples with higher income and education than the general African American population. In contrast, the FACHS sample contains a substantial proportion of individuals who have faced the challenges of economic hardship, low education, and discrimination for most of their lives. Our team of investigators from the University of Georgia and the The University of Minnesota will begin by performing assays of AT(N) biomarkers using frozen blood samples drawn in 2008 and 2019, as well as a new round of blood samples to be obtained in 2024. These data will enable us to use growth curves with individually varying time points (age) to estimate developmental trajectories of AT(N) biomarkers. Next, we will investigate the unique contributions of various environmental, lifestyle, and biological/physiological factors in accelerating these AT(N) trajectories. We are especially interested in testing models where biological/physiological markers of health serve to mediate or moderate the effect of lifestyle and environmental circumstances on changes in AT(N) biomarkers. Finally, Covid-19 data is currently being collected from the study sample and will be available for use in the proposed project. Thus, we will be able to examine whether AT(N) biomarkers at waves 5 and 8 increase the chances of contracting Covid-19, as well as if having suffered a severe case of the illness elevates AT(N) markers at wave 9.