Psychological risk factors, quality of life, community, and brain aging in American Indians: The Strong Heart Study

Status: Current

American Indian adults have a high burden of psychological risk factors and related sequelae, but little is known about their relation to Alzheimer’s disease.  Longitudinal relationships between psychological risk factors and cognitive impairment need to be directly evaluated to examine the temporal sequence of changes that occur with aging. Despite their greater risk for stress, depression, substance misuse, and other ADRD comorbidities, the collective influence of these psychosocial factors on cognitive performance has never been fully evaluated in AI adults. This project aims to collect psychological risk features as well as cognitive test performance data in 3,000 aging American Indian adults. The specific aims are:

Aim 1: Test the longitudinal relationship among stress, depression, and substance use with cognitive performance on the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery in AI adults capitalizing on data collected over 30 years.

Aim 2:  Determine whether HRQoL and community connectedness statistically moderate the longitudinal relationships between stress, depression, and substance use with cognitive performance on the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery.

Aim 3: Establish age-, education level-, and sex-adjusted normative standards for the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery specific to AI adults.

Principal Investigator(s)

• Brian French
• Astrid Suchy-Dicey, PhD

Team Member(s)

• Kyra Oziel
  Research Project Manager
• Keegan Roberts
  Research Coordinator

Heath Research Initiatives

• American Indian and Alaska Native

Focus Areas

• Alzheimer's disease
• Cognition
• NIH toolbox