Study finds association between lifetime experiences of discrimination and incidence of dementia
According to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, people who experience discrimination during their lifetimes have an increased risk of dementia.
The study appears in the February issue of Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
In the study, researchers assessed data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), a medical research study involving more than 6,500 men and women from six communities in the United States—Baltimore; Chicago; Forsyth County, North Carolina; Los Angeles; New York City; and St. Paul, Minn. Participants were contacted by telephone annually and invited to participate in five follow-up in-person clinic examinations from 2000 to 2018.
The research team gathered data from self-reported experiences of lifetime and everyday discrimination. For the lifetime discrimination scale, participants were asked whether they had been treated unfairly in six domains such as being denied a promotion or treated unfairly by police. Participants were also asked to indicate the perceived reason for the unfair treatment such as race, religion, gender, physical appearance, income or sexual orientation.
For the everyday discrimination scale, participants were asked to indicate the frequency with which certain experiences of unfair treatment occur in their day-to-day life.
The prevalence of experiencing any lifetime discrimination was 42% across all MESA participants and higher among Black adults at 72% with experiences of discrimination. Over a median of 15.7 years of follow-up, there were 466 incident cases of dementia. Individuals reporting lifetime discrimination in more than two domains (compared to none) had a greater risk for dementia.
Researchers also noted that the strength of association between discrimination and dementia did not appear to differ by race/ethnicity.
