Alzheimer’s study in Fort Worth seeks 1,000 participants to research disease disparities
Commissioner Roy Brooks and his four siblings watched for six years as their mother slowly descended into Alzheimer’s disease. They watched as she lost contact with her environment and as she stopped remembering the people she knew and loved.
“We always had a feeling that mother was in there somewhere and she knew that her family was with her and we loved her,” Brooks said on Wednesday morning.
The commissioner said he’s committed to making sure no other family has to go through what his did and staunchly threw his support behind a one-of-a-kind-study being conducted at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. The study will examine how and why Alzheimer’s disease affects Hispanic and Black people twice as much as white people.
The Health Science Center will invest $7 million to recruit 1,000 Black people over 50 in North Texas to include them in the Health and Aging Brain Among Latino Elders Alzheimer’s study, which has been happening since September. That month, Health Science Center researchers were awarded a $45 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to expand research into Alzheimer’s disease and the biological differences that cause the disease to disproportionately affect Mexican-Americans. That study will now expand to African-Americans.
Dr. Sid O’Bryant, who leads the efforts, said it’s the first study of its kind in the county and he thinks it’s particularly important that it’s happening in Fort Worth.
“We already look geographically, racially and ethnically what the United States is going to look like in 2050,” he said. “We are a microcosm of this country’s diversity, so you couldn’t have a better place to do this sort of research and it’s nice to see the first time everyone has ever done this is in one of the states that actually already looks like there the U.S. is going to be.”
The study focuses on Mexican- and African-Americans because they develop Alzheimer’s disease 10 years earlier than whites and more frequently. However, most of the Alzheimer’s research focuses on non-Latino whites.
Almost 1,000 Mexican-Americans and 1,000 non-Latino whites over 50 from North Texas have already enrolled in the study.
Brooks is excited about the addition of African-Americans. They will receive PET scans that look for the biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. This will help researchers find the potential causes of the disease, which will create better treatments. Two years later, participants will go through the same scans to see how the markers evolved over time.
They will also receive free interviews, functional exams, clinical laboratory tests and an MRI. The information will be used in the study but will also be shared with the participant’s general health care provider.
“This will help 3,000 people in our community make decisions to improve their health care immediately,” O’Bryant said.
Brooks is throwing his full support behind the initiative.
“I am ready to serve as the credible messenger to bridge the gap between the Health Science Center, who has the research and latest in technology, and the African-American and Hispanic communities that need that information so badly.”
For information about participation in the HABLE study, contact the Institute for Translational Research at 817-735-2963.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 12:18 PM.
