# Determining the effects of neighborhood disadvantage in preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2020 · $36,143

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The social and economic environment in which we live has a major impact on our physical and
mental health and risk of developing diseases ranging from cancer to major depressive disorder
to heart disease. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the 6th leading cause of death and a major, and
rising, contributor to health care expenditures in the United States. Socioeconomic disparities
exist in the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes related to AD and socioeconomic disadvantage is
a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Understanding how exposure to
socioeconomic disadvantage leads to increased AD risk could provide insight into new treatment
and prevention efforts targeted at the most vulnerable populations. Despite this critical need, the
neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage
and AD are currently unknown. To address this understudied topic, the proposed project will
couple a validated, multi-dimensional index of neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage
with a rich longitudinal dataset including state of the art neuroimaging, cognitive testing and
biochemical data from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's disease Prevention (WRAP) and
Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center study cohorts. Preliminary data generated for
this project suggests that exposure to high levels of neighborhood-level socioeconomic
disadvantage in cognitively unimpaired late-middle aged adults is associated with worse
performance on a memory task, decreased volume of the hippocampus (a brain structure critical
for memory processes) and elevated levels of AD biomarkers in the cerebral spinal fluid. These
findings suggest a relationship between high levels of neighborhood disadvantage and pre-clinical
Alzheimer's disease pathology in late middle age, a time of increased risk for eventually
developing AD. The proposed project will specifically interrogate the relationship between
exposure to neighborhood disadvantage in late-middle age and 1) longitudinal decline in
performance on memory-related cognitive tasks, 2) longitudinal atrophy in associated memory-
related brain regions and microstructural white matter changes in tracts connected to those
regions and 3) how AD pathology (amyloid and tau) moderates these relationships. The results
of this study will provide insight into the relationship between exposure to neighborhood
socioeconomic disadvantage during late middle age and preclinical AD. These studies will lay the
groundwork for subsequent mechanistic studies of these relationships and can help inform policy
targeted at ameliorating disparities in Alzheimer's disease.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9972738
- **Project number:** 5F31AG062116-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** JACK FARO VANDER STOEP HUNT
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $36,143
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2021-09-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9972738

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9972738, Determining the effects of neighborhood disadvantage in preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease (5F31AG062116-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9972738. Licensed CC0.

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