A new analysis led by UT Health San Antonio is putting a spotlight on a troubling trend in younger-onset dementia. Researchers report that a form of dementia that often strikes people in midlife appears to be more common and more severe in Hispanic patients than previously recognized, with those patients arriving to specialty clinics already showing more advanced problems with thinking and daily functioning.
Study and publication
The work is detailed in a paper titled "Frontotemporal dementia in Hispanic populations: Regional and national comparisons," published July 23 in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring. The multi-site analysis was led by investigators at UT Health San Antonio, with A. Campbell Sullivan, PsyD, ABPP-CN, listed as senior author and Shannon B. Lavigne as first author.
What researchers found
Investigators pulled together and harmonized clinical, neuroimaging and neuropsychological data from the Glenn Biggs Institute’s FTD Center and the South Texas Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (STAC), then stacked that San Antonio and South Texas cohort against a national dataset from NACC. In the Texas group, there were 17 Hispanic and 22 non-Hispanic white participants, while the NACC comparison included 24 Hispanic and 407 non-Hispanic white participants. Hispanic patients were more likely to present with dystonia, apraxia and postural instability and were more likely to show more advanced cognitive impairment at diagnosis, according to Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.
"The findings underscore diagnostic severity and systemic barriers faced by Hispanic populations with FTD," A. Campbell Sullivan said in a statement to UT Health San Antonio, adding that culturally sensitive tools are needed for more equitable care.
Diagnostic delays and contributing factors
The authors report that people waited, on average, about four years from the first appearance of symptoms to receiving a diagnosis. They point to educational disparities, delayed referrals to specialty care and frequent mislabeling of early symptoms as purely psychiatric issues as likely contributors. Those patterns, they wrote, make it harder to tease apart whether the differences they observed reflect true biologic variation or are instead driven by access, culture and other social factors, per the journal record.
Why South Texas matters
South Texas, home to the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, has become a key region for efforts to diversify dementia research because of its large Hispanic population. The South Texas Alzheimer's Disease Research Center is working to strengthen Hispanic representation in national research cohorts and to feed locally collected data into broader national comparisons, STAC and the Biggs Institute note.
The paper’s authors conclude that larger and well-characterized patient cohorts, long-term follow-up and biomarker validation will be essential to determine whether the differences they documented represent true phenotypic variation or are largely shaped by social and healthcare barriers. For families and clinicians in San Antonio and across South Texas, the study signals that younger-onset dementia can show up differently across communities, and that local research networks are working to narrow that gap.
