People from ethnic minority groups and socioeconomically deprived areas face a significantly increased risk of developing dementia, according to the first study to focus on a diverse population.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London studied more than one million people across London’s East End, believing that most dementia research has focused on relatively affluent people of White European ancestry.
They analysed ten years of primary care data, comparing medical records from 4,137 people with dementia with records from 15,754 people of similar age without the disease.
Writing in today’s edition of *The Lancet Regional Health Europe*, they say one dementia case in 10 was linked to ethnicity, while a similar number was linked to socioeconomic deprivation.
Because stressful and traumatic life events are linked to dementia, it is thought issues such as racism and poverty-induced stress could help to heighten the risk of the disease among these groups.
Black and South Asian people were more likely to develop dementia than their white counterparts, with odds ratios of 1.43 and 1.17 respectively, and were likely to be diagnosed at an earlier age.
Dementia was twice as common in the poorest group compared with the most affluent, based on examination of 10 deciles in the English indices of deprivation.
Phazha Bothongo, who led the study at Queen Mary’s Wolfson Institute of Population Health, said: “These results show that ethnicity and area deprivation in East London are independently associated with dementia – and, crucially, this effect may not be attributable to other risk factors.
“Further study is needed to unpick the underlying mechanisms by which ethnicity and deprivation confer this increased risk of dementia, so that efforts to prevent the disease can be applied across ethnic and socioeconomic boundaries.”
Senior author Dr Charles Marshall, honorary consultant neurologist at Queen Mary, added: “This research highlights a need to prioritise dementia prevention strategies in diverse and deprived populations, where previously the focus has been on modifiable risk factors.
“Our findings suggest there may be relatively modest benefits in targeting established modifiable risk factors, but we could potentially prevent a greater proportion of cases by targeting any modifiable factors underlying the increased risk attributable to ethnicity and deprivation.”
Bothongo et al Dementia risk in a diverse population: A single-region nested case-control study in the East End of London. *Lancet Regional Health* 11 February 2022
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