Researchers in a multi-institutional effort will study the potential link between chemical exposure and its impact on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease risk.
The four higher education institutions recently received a grant worth $11 million from the National Institutes of Health to analyze almost four decades of blood and urine data from 5,000 people, tracking the level of pesticides, metals and other chemicals that could contribute to dementia risk.
Participating entities include Emory University, Northwestern University, Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, and University of California San Francisco. The team also will collaborate with the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“We are striving toward understanding the origins of increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. If there’s an environmental link, we could encourage reduction of environmental exposures in early- and mid-life, decades before cognitive decline and other dementia symptoms,” said the study’s principal investigator, Aimin Chen, MD, PhD, a professor of Epidemiology at Penn. “The findings may also inform environmental health policymaking to potentially reduce instances of brain aging disorders.”
The researchers will link chemical exposure data with MRI and cognitive tests to identify dementia risk indicators, along with analyzing social factors including education, poverty and discrimination redlining to understand social implications of chemical exposure and dementia risk.
“These factors have often not been addressed in studies and could play a significant role, particularly considering the racial health disparities that have long been observed when it comes to many health conditions,” said Lifang Hou, MD, PhD, a professor of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern and a long-term CARDIA investigator. “We hope to give a clearer picture of how exposures may not be equal among different groups and could be fueling differences in outcomes among people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.”
As part of the project, researchers will also seek to inform environmental policy to reduce risks of cognitive decline.
The study will also examine the chemical impact of various substances previously used in paper, plastics, glues and electrical transformers, along with previously used flame retardant materials to analyze the known and unknown chemicals in the samples.
For example, if someone in their 30s who lived in an area with high pesticide exposure but moved away a decade later could develop Alzheimer’s disease in their late 60s, making it exceedingly difficult to track and study long-term impacts of environmental exposure and dementia risk.
“Environmental exposures are complex, and the risks tied to them often come as a mixture,” Chen said. “Longitudinal studies with repeated measures of environmental toxicants and Alzheimer’s disease/dementia risk are limited. Studies in early mid-life are scarce because they’re difficult to secure data for, but they are incredibly valuable.”
