ABCA7, a Genetic Risk Factor Associated with Alzheimer’s Disease Risk in African Americans

African American/Black adults are twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared to non-Hispanic White adults. Genetics partially contributes to this disparity in AD risk, among other factors, as there are several genetic variants associated with AD that are more prevalent in individuals of African or European ancestry. The phospholipid-transporting ATPase ABCA7 (ABCA7) gene has stronger associations with AD risk in individuals with African ancestry than in individuals with European ancestry. In fact, ABCA7 has been shown to have a stronger effect size than the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4 allele in African American/Black adults. ABCA7 is a transmembrane protein involved in lipid homeostasis and phagocytosis. ABCA7 dysfunction is associated with increased amyloid-beta production, reduced amyloid-beta clearance, impaired microglial response to inflammation, and endoplasmic reticulum stress. This review explores the impact of ABCA7 mutations that increase AD risk in African American/Black adults on ABCA7 structure and function and their contributions to AD pathogenesis. The combination of biochemical/biophysical and ‘omics-based studies of these variants needed to elucidate their downstream impact and molecular contributions to AD pathogenesis is highlighted.

Geospatial Distributions of Lead Levels Found in Human Hair and Preterm Birth in San Francisco Neighborhoods

In San Francisco (SF), many environmental factors drive the unequal burden of preterm birth outcomes for communities of color. Here, we examine the association between human exposure to lead (Pb) and preterm birth (PTB) in 19 racially diverse SF zip codes. Pb concentrations were measured in 109 hair samples donated by 72 salons and barbershops in 2018–2019. Multi-method data collection included randomly selecting hair salons stratified by zip code, administering demographic surveys, and measuring Pb in hair samples as a biomarker of environmental exposure to heavy metals. Concentrations of Pb were measured by atomic emission spectrometry. Aggregate neighborhood Pb levels were linked to PTB and demographic data using STATA 16 SE (StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX, USA). Pb varied by zip code (p < 0.001) and correlated with PTB (p < 0.01). Increases in unadjusted Pb concentration predicted an increase in PTB (β = 0.003; p < 0.001) and after adjusting for poverty (β = 0.002; p < 0.001). Confidence intervals contained the null after further adjustment for African American/Black population density (p = 0.16), suggesting that race is more indicative of high rates of PTB than poverty. In conclusion, Pb was found in every hair sample collected from SF neighborhoods. The highest concentrations were found in predominately African American/Black and high poverty neighborhoods, necessitating public health guidelines to eliminate this environmental injustice.

Race-Specific Genetic Profiles of Homologous Recombination Deficiency in Multiple Cancers

Homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) has been used to predict both cancer prognosis and the response to DNA-damaging therapies in many cancer types. HRD has diverse manifestations in different cancers and even in different populations. Many screening strategies have been designed for detecting the sensitivity of a patient’s HRD status to targeted therapies. However, these approaches suffer from low sensitivity, and are not specific to each cancer type and population group. Therefore, identifying race-specific and targetable HRD-related genes is of clinical importance. Here, we conducted analyses using genomic sequencing data that was generated by the Pan-Cancer Atlas. Collapsing non-synonymous variants with functional damage to HRD-related genes, we analyzed the association between these genes and race within cancer types using the optimal sequencing kernel association test (SKAT-O). We have identified race-specific mutational patterns of curated HRD-related genes across cancers. Overall, more significant mutation sites were found in ATM, BRCA2, POLE, and TOP2B in both the ‘White’ and ‘Asian’ populations, whereas PTEN, EGFG, and RIF1 mutations were observed in both the ‘White’ and ‘African American/Black’ populations. Furthermore, supported by pathogenic tendency databases and previous reports, in the ‘African American/Black’ population, several associations, including BLM with breast invasive carcinoma, ERCC5 with ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma, as well as PTEN with stomach adenocarcinoma, were newly described here. Although several HRD-related genes are common across cancers, many of them were found to be specific to race. Further studies, using a larger cohort of diverse populations, are necessary to identify HRD-related genes that are specific to race, for guiding gene testing methods.

The Traumatic Mark in Invisible Man

Invisible Man is the representative work of Ralph Ellison, a famous contemporary American black writer, which mainly describes the growing process of a black man. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the racial trauma that the protagonist experienced at school, in the factory and political group, the three kinds of symptoms after the trauma-hyperarousal, intrusion and constriction, and the result that the protagonist cannot recover from his trauma due to racial discrimination.

Efficacy of a Timed Activity Intervention to Improve Sleep: Findings From the Healthy Patterns Study

We conducted a two-arm RCT with dyads of 200 persons living at home with dementia (PLWD) who reported sleep disruption and family caregivers. Components of the Healthy Patterns intervention included: 1) assessing PLWD functional status, preferences and interests; 2) educating caregivers on environmental cues to promote activity and sleep; and 3) training caregivers in timed morning, afternoon, and evening activities. Outcomes included: PLWD quality of life, sleep, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Sleep-wake patterns were assessed using wrist actigraphy and proxy-reported measures. The main intervention effects were tested using ANCOVA. The average age of participants was 73.4 years, 67% were female, 80% were African American/Black). At 4 weeks, the intervention group demonstrated less sleep-related impairment (p = 0.0031) and reported higher quality of life than the control group (p = 0.0074). These results provide new fundamental knowledge regarding the effects of timing activity on sleep and well-being.

The optics of dispossession: urban precarity as political art

How are conditions of urban dispossession sustained and perpetuated by the way peoples on the margins of the world economy are imagined and brought to public visibility? With a focus on the works of European artists, this article explores the image-making projects whereby ghettos, shanty communities and favelas are represented as iconic lifeworlds of the poor. Competing representations of urban poverty are manufactured for public attention by aesthetic, symbolic and affective means, ranging from a romance of despair or humanitarian compassion to a nostalgic longing for premodern signs of a deprived but simpler life. In contrast to the racialised human form, which is central to iconographies of the North American Black ghetto, the shanty-town inhabitants and city builders of the Global South are typically rendered visually absent: a tropology of people’s disempowerment and dispossession. Although often encoded by a critique of intensifying inequalities, the globalised traffic in urban poverty-art relies on an image-making process that is grounded in a detachment from social life. The representations of urban dispossession tend to produce a repertoire of free-floating emblems and signs that can be variously deployed, assembled, appropriated and discarded. Such visual templates are globally consumed as works of art that can alter urban imaginaries, encourage tourism and local economic development as much as neoliberal subjectification. After analysing a range of such artistic endeavours, this article concludes by focusing attention on how an image-maker’s commitment to humanising optics of urban dispossession can transform non-representational art to become a practice of truth.

Memory Problems During COVID in Low-income Older Adults

Prevention, with widespread lifestyle risk reduction at the community-level, is currently considered an effective method to decrease Alzheimer’s disease (AD). As part of the Virginia Commonwealth University iCubed Health and Wellness in Aging Core, diverse older adults (60+) living in Richmond, VA, with incomes below $12,000/year and managing either diabetes/cardiovascular symptoms, were offered weekly lifestyle telephone-health coaching for 12-weeks, providing education, motivations, self-efficacy, and referral services for AD lifestyle risk. The study sample (n=40, mean age 68 years (range: 60-77 years) was 88% African American/Black (n=35), 100% Non-Hispanic, and 45% males (n=18)). Thirty-nine (95%) of subjects successfully participated in coaching sessions; on average 91.9% (11) sessions/subject were completed. Participants provided positive anecdotal feedback and the need for continued health coaching during COVID. N=30 (75%) of the original sample consented for continued health coaching during the Covid pandemic, 63% female, 88% African American/Black, 60-77 age range (mean age 69 years), and 47% reporting memory problems. Baseline Covid interviews indicated poorer health status associated with reporting memory problems for poor physical health days (F=7.03;p=.01); poor mental health days (F=6.88;p=.01); total mental/physical health poor days (F=2.76;p=.11); sad days (F=15.52;p=.001); worried days (F=6.27;p=.02); tired days (F=9.77;p=.004); feelings of emptiness (F=10.09;p=.004); feelings of rejection (F=3.382;p=.08); feelings of failure (F=7.58;p=.01); little interest/pleasure (F=7.84;p=.009); and feeling down (F=6.75;p=.02). In conclusion, this preliminary work creates the impetus for future large-scale AD prevention investigations to improve the lives of AD-risk, low-income, diverse older adults reporting memory problems. This research indicates the subjective reporting of memory problems requires health intervention.

Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania

Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage1–3. Another trackway discovered two years earlier at nearby site A was partially excavated and attributed to a hominin, but curious affinities with bears (ursids) marginalized its importance to the paleoanthropological community, and the location of these footprints fell into obscurity3–5. In 2019, we located, excavated and cleaned the site A trackway, producing a digital archive using 3D photogrammetry and laser scanning. Here we compare the footprints at this site with those of American black bears, chimpanzees and humans, and we show that they resemble those of hominins more than ursids. In fact, the narrow step width corroborates the original interpretation of a small, cross-stepping bipedal hominin. However, the inferred foot proportions, gait parameters and 3D morphologies of footprints at site A are readily distinguished from those at site G, indicating that a minimum of two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits coexisted at Laetoli.