2024 Advancing Research on Care and Outcome Measurements (ARCOM)

Towards an Equitable Alternative for Early Alzheimer’s Disease Screening

Can a motor learning task screen more equitably for Alzheimer’s than common cognitive tests? 

Sydney Schaefer, Ph.D.
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ - United States

Background

According to the 2023 Alzheimer’s Facts and Figures report, Latino individuals in the United States are 1.5 times more likely than white individuals to develop Alzheimer’s. However, older Latinos tend to be diagnosed much later than older white individuals. This is problematic because many of the current and emerging therapies for Alzheimer’s are most effective in the early stages of the disease before the onset of cognitive impairment.

While blood-based biological markers (biomarkers) of Alzheimer’s may help with the early detection of disease in both white and Latino older adults, experts recommend using these tests in combination with brief, clinical tests. However, many common cognitive tests show differences between white and Latino individuals, which can lead to test bias and make interpretation of scores challenging across different groups of people.

Dr. Sydney Schaefer and colleagues have developed a more equitable alternative to traditional cognitive testing for early Alzheimer’s screening that can be paired with blood-based biomarkers or used on its own. The task is a test of procedural memory (the memory of how to do things, also known as motor learning), rather than declarative memory (the memory of facts, data, and events). Previously, the research team demonstrated that scores on this motor learning task are not dependent on demographic factors like sex and education. They will now study whether an individual’s ethnicity impacts their motor learning scores. 

Research Plan

Dr. Schaefer and colleagues will leverage data from the MindCrowd cohort, an online research study on cognitive aging. They will focus on participants aged 50 years and older in the United States and who identify as either Latino or white. Participants in MindCrowd complete a memory test and a demographic survey, submit extensive data on their lifestyle and health, and complete continued cognitive tests over 8 months-period. MindCrowd participants who choose to participate in this study will be mailed instructions for the task in English and Spanish and links to video tutorials so they can administer the task at home.
 
Dr. Schaefer and colleagues will study whether scores on the motor learning test are less impacted by one’s ethnicity than scores on cognitive tests. They will then compare the validity of cognitive versus motor tests as predictors of daily functioning in Latino and white participants.

Impact

The results may support the use of a motor-based test to screen for Alzheimer’s in diverse populations. Such a test may be less impacted by an individual’s demographic characteristics, including ethnicity, and thus may be preferable to cognitive tests for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s across different populations.