Study links cognition with ethnicity, cultural influences

The study, in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, is the first cognition paper from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Funded by the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, MESA has been following nearly 7,000 adults between the ages of 45 and 84 since 2000. Data for this paper were collected from 4,591 Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and people of Chinese race/ethnicity. The mean age of participants was just over 70.
“We found differences in cognition not only by race/ethnicity, but by many other factors that we had collected (age, education, occupational status, income, and the ApoE gene, known risk factors for dementia – as would be expected – but also household size, place of birth, years, and generation in the U.S.),” said lead author Dr. Annette Fitzpatrick, research professor of family medicine in the University of Washington School of Medicine and research professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health
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