Alzheimer’s disease seems to develop differently in the brains of black patients than it does in the brains of white patients, according to the findings of a new study.
The study also found that black people were more apt to suffer from an array of different types of brain changes contributing to dementia, Newsmax reported.
In the study, which was published on July 15 in the journal Neurology, researchers analyzed the autopsies of both black and white Alzheimer’s patients.
The autopsies revealed that blacks were more likely than whites to experience a mix of dementia-related changes instead of the usual damage associated with “pure” Alzheimer’s disease, HealthDay News reported via Philly.com.
The study’s lead author Lisa Barnes, a professor of neurology and behavioral science at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, was quoted by HealthDay News in the aforementioned report on Philly.com as having said that the study’s authors “were surprised that the African Americans were much more likely to have a mixed picture” and that the “underlying brain changes were different,” indicating that the African Americans “probably had different risk factors.”
We were surprised that the African Americans were much more likely to have a mixed picture (…) The underlying brain changes were different, which indicates that they probably had different risk factors.
In other news, an unrelated study suggests that Alzheimer’s might be present in the brain prior to the appearance of symptoms and in yet another unrelated study, researchers have found that symptoms appear 18 years prior to diagnosis.
Are you concerned that you may develop Alzheimer’s disease in your latter years of life?
