O4‐11‐01: Multicentre performance evaluation of a novel, fully automated electrochemiluminescence immunoassay for the quantitation of Aβ(1–42) in human cerebrospinal fluid

Background: By the year 2050, it is projected the majority of nearly 14 million people living with dementia in the United States will be racial/ethnic minorities. Survival after dementia diagnosis is not well characterized for multiethnic communitybased populations with equal access to healthcare. Delineating if there are racial/ethnic differences in survival time after dementia diagnosis is important for public health planning and would shed light on whether there are differences in severity of disease at time of diagnosis, care received by patients, or pace of progression of underlying disease. We compared survival after dementia diagnosis in five racial/ethnic groups among members of a large healthcare delivery system. Methods: We studied N1⁄459,494 dementia patients receiving care in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California medical system who were age 64 years and diagnosed with dementia between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2013 (n1⁄43,847 Asian Americans, n1⁄44,942 African Americans, n1⁄44,371 Latinos, n1⁄41,224 Native Americans, and n1⁄445,110 non-Latino whites). Age at diagnosis and date of death were identified from medical records and the California Automated Mortality Linkage System through December 31, 2013. We estimated median post-diagnosis Kaplan-Meier survival times and sex-adjusted Cox proportional hazards models with age as the timescale. Results:Dementia patients were followed for up to 14 years after dementia diagnosis, during which 64.1% (n1⁄438,159) died. Non-Latino whites were older at dementia diagnosis (mean 83.7 years) and Latinos and African Americans were youngest at dementia diagnosis (mean 82.2 years and 82.1 years, respectively). Median survival time after dementia diagnosis was shortest among non-Latino whites (3.09 years). Relative to non-Latino whites, median survival time was 0.35 years longer for Native Americans, 0.65 years longer for African Americans, 1.0 year longer for Latinos, and 1.29 years longer for Asian Americans (Table 1). Conclusions: Our results suggest non-Latino whites are diagnosed with dementia at older ages and have shorter survival times after dementia diagnosis than other racial/ethnic groups. These differences in post-diagnosis survival should be taken into account for public health planning and when interpreting evidence on racial/ethnic disparities in dementia.