For years, we’ve known that Latinos are at a higher risk for dementia, but now there’s more evidence of this. The Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of Alzheimer’s Association recently published on the largest and longest studies of ethnic disparities in dementia risk. They compared 6 ethnic and racial groups over the span of 14 years within the same geographic population, including Latinos.
The study included over 274,000 northern California members of Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest private integrated healthcare system, which includes over 10 million members. Researchers used electronic health records covering patient visits over 14 years in order to identify patients with dementia, taking into account their race and ethnicity.
Researchers focused in on Blacks, American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Asians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, and whites. Over the span of 14 years that they collected data from people aged 64 and older and they found that dementia incidence ranged from an average annual range of 26.6 cases for blacks, 22.2 cases per American Indians/Alaskan Natives, 15.2 cases per Asian Americans, 19.6 cases for Latinos and Pacific Islanders and lastly 19.3 cases for whites.
