A new study reveals that blacks are at a higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease that has been traced to the existence of a variant of a cholesterol-related gene--ABCA7.
The increased risk for Alzheimer's disease may be double in the older black population, according to the study.
But researchers say that while the increased risk sounds high, it is really only a slight one. They also said that other influences come in to play when assessing the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, including environmental factors.
"How much does this increase your risk? It's modest," said Dr. Robert Nussbaum who was not involved in the study and is a professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.
Dr. Christiane Reitz, the study's lead author and assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, said that there hasn't been much research focused on blacks and Alzheimer's disease that had a sample size large enough to look into gene variations.
"The findings need to be replicated, and we need to learn more about the biological mechanisms," Reitz said.
And Nussbaum said that while this study is important, the findings do not tell the whole story, according to his editorial that was published with the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"It's all up in the air," he wrote.
"Gene studies like this are good for finding connections between genes and [disease], but they can't tell us what the mechanisms are."
Both Reitz and Nussbaum agree that more research must be conducted so that the full biological picture of Alzheimer's disease can be better understood.
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