On Sept. 14, 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it had added funding for more biomarker measures, including positron emission tomography imaging, to the ongoing Health and Aging Brain Among Latino Elders (HABLE) Study.

NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) awarded new support that is expected to total $45.5 million over five years to the University of North Texas Health Science Center (HSC) at Fort Worth for the Health and Aging Brain Among Latino Elders-Amyloid, Tau, and Neurodegeneration (HABLE-AT(N)) Study.

Developing a better understanding of how and why many diseases affect diverse communities in different ways is paramount in the search for treatments and prevention for Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. While studies suggest that dementia prevalence rates appear to be declining, most of this evidence is based on studies in non-Latino whites; it is largely unknown whether these trends extend to under-represented populations.

Launched in September 2017, the HABLE study has nearly completed recruitment of 1,000 Mexican Americans and 1,000 non-Latino whites, age 50 years and older, in the Fort Worth area. HABLE participants receive a functional exam, clinical labs, neuropsychological testing, bloodwork, and an MRI of the brain. The added funding for HABLE-AT(N) significantly expands the neuroimaging component of the study to include amyloid and tau PET. The researchers also plan to determine if traces of amyloid peptides (Aβ40 and Aβ42), tau, and neurofilament light (NfL) — as well as exosomes

in the blood — can be used to screen across the spectrum of Alzheimer’s, from asymptomatic to mild cognitive impairment and advanced stages of the disease.

An additional benefit of HABLE and HABLE AT(N) will be the ability to better classify/categorize participants into groups by type of dementia and stage of the disease. This will help facilitate potential enrollment in future studies.

The new study is instrumental in making sure Alzheimer’s biomarker studies are increasingly representative of the population. HABLE-AT(N) will provide a variety of biological, behavioral, environmental, and sociocultural data to examine the big picture of how Alzheimer’s affects people throughout their lives. There will also be data to determine whether Mexican Americans experience the same Alzheimer’s biomarker trajectory reported in past studies.