Identifying lifestyle risk factors that discriminate memory trajectories: Differential findings across racial and ethnic groups in older adults.

INTRODUCTION

Differences in lifestyle factors contribute towards inequalities in dementia incidence and memory trajectories across racial and ethnic groups. We identifieded lifestyle risk factors that best discriminat memory trajectories in older adults without cognitive impairment.

METHOD: The study included 523 older adults from the University of California, Davis-Alzheimer's disease Research Center and 1097 from the Kaiser Healthy-Aging and Diverse Life-Experiences Study. Age, sex, and 13 lifestyle risk factors were used to discriminate latent class memory trajectories in African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. Structural equation modeling and machine learning methods were applied.

RESULTS

In both cohorts, three patterns of memory trajectories were identified. While there was overlap between risk factors discriminating high and low memory patterns for everyone, we also identified key differences in the top predictors across groups in both cohorts.

DISCUSSION: Identifying relative importance of lifestyle risk factors will promote early identification of adults with differential memory performance across and within racial and ethnic groups.