{"doi":"10.1007/s11357-024-01371-1","title":"Uncovering mediational pathways behind racial and socioeconomic disparities in brain volumes: insights from the UK Biobank study","abstract":"Mediation pathways explaining racial/ethnic and socioeconomic (SES) disparities in structural MRI markers of brain health remain underexplored. We examined racial/ethnic and SES disparities in sMRI markers and tested total, direct, and indirect effects through lifestyle, health-related, and cognition factors using a structural equations modeling approach among 36,184 UK Biobank participants aged 40-70 years at baseline assessment (47% men). Race (non-White vs. White) and lower SES-predicted poorer brain sMRI volumetric outcomes at follow-up, with racial/ethnic disparities in sMRI outcomes involving multiple pathways and SES playing a central role in those pathways. Mediational patterns differed across outcomes, with the SES-sMRI total effect being partially mediated for all outcomes. Over 20% of the total effect (TE) of race/ethnicity on WMH was explained by the indirect effect (IE), by a combination of different pathways going through SES, lifestyle, health-related, and cognition factors. This is in contrast to < 10% for total brain, gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and frontal GM left/right. Another significant finding is that around 57% of the total effect for SES and the normalized white matter hyperintensity (WMH) was attributed to an indirect effect. This effect encompasses many pathways that involve lifestyle, health-related, and cognitive aspects. Aside from WMH, the percent of TE of SES mediated through various pathways ranged from ~ 5% for WM to > 15% up to 36% for most of the remaining sMRI outcomes, which are composed mainly of GM phenotypes. Race and SES were important determinants of brain volumetric outcomes, with partial mediation of racial/ethnic disparities through SES, lifestyle, health-related, and cognition factors.","journal":"GeroScience","year":2024,"id":429539,"datarank":0.32958368660043297,"base_score":2.1972245773362196,"endowment":2.1972245773362196,"self_citation_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9415,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":388946,"name":"Hind A. Beydoun","orcid":"0000-0002-4984-4429","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":422676,"name":"Marie Fanelli Kuczmarski","orcid":"0000-0001-6903-3386","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":879762,"name":"Yi‐Han Hu","orcid":"0000-0003-0882-6563","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388945,"name":"Danielle Shaked","orcid":"0000-0002-8071-7698","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":48759,"name":"Jordan Weiss","orcid":"0000-0002-0392-3535","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388948,"name":"Shari R. Waldstein","orcid":"0000-0003-0792-6167","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":17636,"name":"Lenore J. Launer","orcid":"0000-0002-3238-7612","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108724,"name":"Michele K. Evans","orcid":"0000-0002-8546-2831","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":22038,"name":"Alan B. Zonderman","orcid":"0000-0002-6523-4778","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":247987,"name":"May A. Beydoun","orcid":"0000-0002-1050-4523","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":63,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:59:11.328802Z","pmid":"39388067","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}