FORT WORTH, Texas — The National Institutes of Health is giving $149 million to researchers at the University of North Texas Health Science Center to pay for researchers to study the biology of Alzheimer’s disease in multiple racial and ethnic groups.
The money will fund the first large-scale study of the biology of Alzheimer’s disease in the three largest racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., according to the researchers. The trial will recruit and enroll Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and non-Hispanic white Americans. The study’s focus on health disparities across racial and ethnic groups addresses one of the biggest flaws in clinical research in the U.S. today: Most research involves white people.
“We can study how this disease begins in the earliest signs and symptoms across racial and ethnic groups, so that in time, we will be able to have true precision medicine that’s relevant to everybody,” said Sid O’Bryant, the lead researcher and executive director of the Institute for Translational Research, the lab that will conduct the research
