Alzheimer's Research Looks at Hot Spots Across the U.S.

A growing body of research is identifying U.S. counties and neighborhoods with higher prevalence of Alzheimer's disease, with geriatricians striving to find common risk factors in those locations, and any possibility of mitigating them, reports the Wall Street Journal . The investigators have mined government and medical data to find areas with high and low prevalence, and found that overall prevalence is more highly focused in Southeast and Gulf Coast states compared with Western states. "We've thought about Alzheimer's as a purely biological disease and neglected the social determinants of health" like income, education, and access to healthcare and nutritious food, says Duke University's P. Murali Doraiswamy. A recent study from UsAgainstAlzheimer's and the Urban Institute cited 25 counties with the highest and lowest prevalence of Alzheimer's disease for Blacks, Latinos, and whites, according to 2016 Medicare data. Medical experts and researchers on aging suggest the location-centric analyses can help identify gaps between where treatment and research are supplied and where they are needed. The studies also localize regions that might benefit from more intense and customized interventions to modify behavior and improve local living conditions that impact health. "Until we find an effective cure, the most we can do and best we can do is to try to change some of the factors that might contribute to the onset of dementia," explains the Urban Institute's Stipica Mudrazija.