On Oct. 12, 2020, the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis announced a $14.6 million grant that will support studies to investigate whether early markers of Alzheimer’s that have shown promise for predicting the disease in white populations also predict the disease in African Americans.

The researchers also will seek biological and social determinants of health that may explain the possible racial differences in these markers.

The researchers combined existing data from earlier studies to obtain a larger sample size of African Americans. They also will add prospectively collected data from new studies currently underway; these include investigations of Alzheimer’s disease markers in this underrepresented population and how the markers change over time.

The researchers planned to re-analyze existing samples and brain scans collected from past participants along with prospectively collected samples and scans, including cerebrospinal fluid, MRI scans and positron emission tomography (PET) scans. The cerebrospinal fluid samples and imaging scans can reveal the presence of protein plaques and tangles in the brain — called amyloid plaques and tau tangles — that build up silently for a long period of time and eventually interfere with cognition.

The ongoing clinical and biomarker studies that will be incorporated into this analysis include studies being conducted at the Washington University Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center, the University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer Disease Core Center, the Emory University Alzheimer Disease Research Center, the Harvard Aging Brain Study, and the Anti-Amyloid Treatment of Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s trial.