Public Health.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Gerontology
• Public Health

Background:

• Dementia risk scores aid in early identification of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs).
• Existing risk scores may be less predictive in diverse populations due to a lack of race/ethnicity considerations.
• The Mexican American Dementia Nomogram (MADeN) score was developed to assess dementia risk.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the Mexican American Dementia Nomogram (MADeN) score's association with subjective and objective cognition.
• To assess the MADeN score's predictive utility across diverse ethnoracial groups, including Hispanic/Latin American (H/L), non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White individuals.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 3,634 participants in the Health and Aging Brain Study: Health Disparities.
• Calculated modified MADeN scores based on factors including age, education, social support, and health conditions.
• Employed nested regression models to examine relationships between MADeN scores, subjective memory concerns (SMCs), and cognitive performance, stratified by race/ethnicity.

Main Results:

• Modified MADeN scores explained 15.1% of variance in SMCs and 9.2% in cognitive performance in the full sample.
• MADeN scores showed significant predictive power for cognitive performance in H/L (13.3%), Black (5.2%), and White (2.3%) individuals.
• SMCs explained additional cognitive variance for Black and White individuals, but not for H/Ls.

Conclusions:

• Higher MADeN scores correlate with increased subjective memory concerns and poorer cognitive performance.
• The MADeN score is most effective for risk detection in H/L individuals and moderately meaningful for Black individuals.
• Subjective memory concerns provide more informative insights into cognitive performance for non-Hispanic White individuals.