Xianglin Du
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are becoming more common as the population ages, and Alzheimer's has no cure. Their causes remain largely unknown, but risk has been tied to age, education, head injury and vascular factors such as high blood pressure.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
hypertension
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Determine trends in the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias from 1991 to 2020 among Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 or older, and how prevalence varies by state, region, age, gender, race/ethnicity and other conditions.
- Measure how often dementia-free Medicare beneficiaries develop dementia over up to 30 years, and how this relates to vascular factors such as hypertension and other risk factors.
- Compare dementia risk in Medicare patients diagnosed with major cancers versus similar people without cancer, to test how a cancer diagnosis and anticancer drug therapy affect dementia risk.
- Determine the separate and combined effects of antihypertensive, antidiabetic and anticancer drugs on dementia risk from 2007 to 2020, using Medicare Part D prescription records.
More about the research
Some drugs for high blood pressure and diabetes have been linked to lower dementia risk, and a 2019 clinical trial found that intensive blood pressure control reduced mild cognitive impairment. Because hypertension and diabetes are so common, these drugs might offer a way to prevent dementia, but no large study has examined how blood pressure, diabetes and cancer drugs together affect dementia risk.
Why it matters
Dementia affects millions of older adults and their families, and no cure exists. By showing whether common blood pressure, diabetes and cancer drugs raise or lower dementia risk across millions of Medicare beneficiaries, this work could point to ways to prevent or delay dementia and inform treatment choices for older patients with these conditions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nina Joyce
Brown University, RI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Characterize how crash risk changes over many years in older drivers with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease or related dementias, using 13 years of Medicare claims linked to New Jersey licensing and crash records.
Monica O'Reilly-Jacob
Columbia University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Identify people living with dementia who receive care from nurse practitioners serving as main or ancillary primary care providers, by correcting Medicare claims for incident-to billing and applying the Primary Care Provider Identification Algorithm (PCP-IA).
Pamela Lutsey
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Measure rural versus urban differences in new cardiovascular disease and its management, using MarketScan and Medicare 20% insurance claims classified by rural-urban commuting area codes.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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