Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
Project Summary Recent work has begun to examine associations between perceived discrimination (PD) and later life cognitive impairment. Both cross-sectional and short-term longitudinal (i.e., 2-6 year) studies suggest that general PD-- that is, PD not necessarily attributed to any specific reason such as race, gender, or beliefs--is related to worse cognitive function in later life, particularly within the memory domain. However, there has been a lack of studies with long-term follow-up periods focused on reported experiences of PD earlier in the life course, and few studies of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders (ADRD). Studies have also lacked a means of addressing potential bias due to selective survival. Finally, studies have yet to examine the potentially complex interactions between multiple attributions for PD and subgroups. The present exploratory/developmental study seeks to fill these gaps by examining associations between PD at age 29 and ADRD by age 76 in a subset of the Project Talent cohort. Project Talent was a national probability sample of high school students in 1960, 25% of whom were followed up at age 29 in the early to mid-1970s. The PT Freshman class, at age 29, received a measure of PD similar to the contemporary measures of major lifetime discrimination. The cohort has since been followed up in later life for chronic health conditions (from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services), including ADRD classification based on the ICD9/10 codes, and mortality f(rom the National Death Index). After updating these data to reflect the most recent two years through age 76 for the sample, we will investigate two aims. The first involves estimating the association between PD at age 29 and ADRD by age 76, controlling for both standard confounders and selective survival. Our second aim utilizes recursive partitioning to determine the potentially complex interactions between specific PD attributions and subgroups conferring the greatest ADRD risk. Given the relative newness of this area of work and dearth of long-term follow-up studies, we expect results to contribute significantly to the current understanding of the role of PD in ADRD.
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