Rutgers Launches First-Ever US Study Tracking Alzheimer's Risk Factors Specifically In South Asian Americans

Researchers at Rutgers University's Krieger Klein Alzheimer's Research Center, within the university's Brain Health Institute, have launched the South Asian Middle Age Risk Tracking for brain Health study, known as SAMARTH — the first research initiative in the United States specifically dedicated to tracking the long-term brain health of South Asian Americans and identifying the modifiable risk and protective factors driving their Alzheimer's disease and related dementia outcomes. The new longitudinal study follows directly from a comprehensive review the Rutgers team conducted of 25 years of data on dementia prevalence and risk factors in India, published in the peer-reviewed journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, which identified critical gaps in existing research specifically affecting South Asian populations.

The rationale behind launching a population-specific study of this nature rests on a growing body of scientific evidence indicating that the risk factors driving dementia in South Asian populations differ meaningfully from those documented in non-Hispanic white and broader European-ancestry populations, where the overwhelming majority of existing Alzheimer's research has historically been concentrated. Akankshi Oberoi, a researcher at the Krieger Klein Alzheimer's Research Center and lead author of the foundational review paper, specifically highlighted this critical research gap, noting that the growing evidence of population-specific risk-factor differences creates an urgent need for research tailored specifically to South Asian communities in order to guide effective, population-appropriate prevention and treatment strategies.

Perhaps the most striking finding to emerge from the Rutgers team's foundational review involves genetics: the review found that genetic variants long associated with elevated dementia risk in populations of European ancestry appear to play a comparatively limited role in driving dementia risk among South Asian populations specifically. That finding carries significant scientific and clinical implications, suggesting that whatever unique combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors is actually driving elevated or distinct dementia risk patterns within South Asian communities likely remains substantially different from, and far less well characterised than, the risk factors that decades of predominantly Western research have already identified and extensively studied within European-ancestry populations.

Michal Schnaider Beeri, Director of the Krieger Klein Alzheimer's Research Center, framed the broader public health stakes underlying this research gap in stark terms, describing it as a direct obligation from a public health impact standpoint to generate evidence capable of being translated into treatments and early diagnostic tools specifically tailored to South Asian communities. Beeri specifically emphasised that South Asians remain substantially underrepresented within the broader body of existing Alzheimer's research globally, a gap that has directly resulted in a corresponding lack of tailored information, diagnostic approaches, and treatment options specifically suited to this population's distinct risk profile — a gap the SAMARTH study is now explicitly designed to begin closing.

The demographic stakes underlying this research extend well beyond the South Asian American community alone, given the sheer scale of population aging currently unfolding across South Asia itself. According to the 2023 UNFPA India Ageing Report, the number of Indians aged 60 and older is projected to reach approximately 340 million by 2050 — representing roughly one in every six older adults worldwide, a demographic shift of genuinely global significance that brings with it a correspondingly substantial rising burden of dementia-related illness carrying major socio-economic consequences both within India itself and across the global Indian diaspora, including the sizeable South Asian American population the SAMARTH study specifically targets.

The SAMARTH study's practical design involves recruiting individuals between the ages of 45 and 70 with ethnic or racial backgrounds tracing to the South Asian subcontinent, specifically prioritising participants who have one or more parents affected by Alzheimer's disease or related dementias — a recruitment criterion designed to build a study population with elevated likelihood of eventually developing similar conditions themselves, thereby maximising the statistical power of the longitudinal tracking data the research team will collect over the coming years. Enrolled participants will undergo comprehensive assessments repeated every two years, encompassing detailed surveys, cognitive and language assessments, motor function testing, blood tests, physical and neurological examinations, and brain imaging — a genuinely comprehensive, multi-modal data-collection protocol designed to capture the full range of potential risk and protective factors the study aims to identify.

That research design reflects the study's explicitly ambitious scope, examining not just genetic predisposition but the full range of factors potentially contributing to dementia risk within South Asian American communities specifically, including lifestyle choices spanning physical activity, nutrition, and sleep patterns, alongside broader socio-economic factors and social determinants of health that may operate differently within immigrant and diaspora communities compared to populations remaining within South Asia itself. That broader, more holistic research framing reflects growing scientific recognition that diaspora populations often experience health outcomes shaped by a genuinely distinct combination of inherited genetic risk and the specific new societal, dietary, and lifestyle factors they encounter after migration — factors that a population-specific study like SAMARTH is uniquely positioned to disentangle in ways that neither purely India-based research nor broader, non-population-specific American dementia research could adequately capture on its own.

For prospective participants, the Rutgers research team has structured the study to include compensation for time and effort invested, alongside an accessible enrolment process managed through a dedicated screening process, with interested individuals able to reach the research team directly by phone or email to learn more about participation requirements and begin the formal screening and enrolment process.

The SAMARTH study also builds directly on Rutgers' broader, sustained institutional investment in Asian American brain health research, complementing existing initiatives including the Rutgers-NYU Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity and the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health, alongside ongoing, related Rutgers research efforts including the Chinese Older Adults Study and an earlier South Asian Aging Brain Study — a research infrastructure that has previously attracted more than $4.2 million in National Institutes on Aging funding specifically dedicated to developing a broader Resource Center for Alzheimer's and Dementia Research across Asian and Pacific American populations more generally.

For the Indian American and broader South Asian American community, the launch of a dedicated, longitudinal study of this nature represents a genuinely significant development within a healthcare research landscape that has historically underserved the community's specific needs, given how substantially Alzheimer's and dementia research has historically concentrated on European-ancestry populations to the near-exclusion of most other ethnic and racial groups. As India's own population continues aging at a historically unprecedented pace, and as the South Asian American community itself continues growing and, correspondingly, aging within the United States, research initiatives like SAMARTH are likely to prove increasingly consequential for shaping how both American and Indian healthcare systems eventually approach dementia prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for hundreds of millions of South Asians on both sides of the diaspora divide in the decades ahead.

Beyond its direct clinical and public health implications, the SAMARTH study also carries broader significance for how American biomedical research more generally approaches diaspora and immigrant health, offering a potential methodological template for similarly designed, population-specific longitudinal studies targeting other historically underrepresented immigrant communities facing their own distinct, insufficiently characterised disease-risk profiles.

Rutgers researchers have indicated that early recruitment efforts will prioritise New Jersey's substantial South Asian American population before expanding enrolment to additional states, reflecting both the practical logistics of the university's existing clinical infrastructure and New Jersey's standing as home to one of the country's largest concentrations of Indian American and broader South Asian American residents.

As SAMARTH's first wave of participant assessments begins, the study's ultimate legacy will be measured not in this initial recruitment phase but in the years of longitudinal data collection still to come — data that researchers hope will eventually reshape how clinicians, families, and public health systems on both sides of the Indian diaspora approach one of the most consequential health challenges facing an aging global population.