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Mary Elizabeth Jones, 1 Irene Petersen, 1 Kate Walters, 1 Cini Bhanu, 1 Jill Manthorpe, 2 Rosalind Raine, 3 Naaheed Mukadam, 4 Claudia Cooper 4 1Department of Primary Care and Population Health, University College London, London, UK; 2NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London, London, UK; 3Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK; 4Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UKCorrespondence: Claudia CooperDivision of Psychiatry, University College London, 6th Floor, Maple House, Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 7BN, UKTel +44 7759703235Email claudia.cooper@ucl.ac.ukPurpose: To test hypotheses that minority ethnic people with dementia in the UK receive fewer anti-dementia drugs and more psychotropic and anticholinergic drugs associated with harms.Patients and Methods: We analyzed UK primary care electronic health records from The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database (2014– 2016), comparing psychotropic drug prescribing initiation and duration between people with dementia from White, Black, and Asian ethnic groups. We repeated analyses in people (aged 50+) without dementia, to explore whether any differences found reflected prescribing patterns in the general older population, or were specific to dementia.Results: We included 53,718 people with and 1,648,889 people without dementia. Among people with dementia, compared to White ethnic groups, Asian people were less likely to be prescribed anti-dementia drugs when they were potentially indicated (adjusted prevalence rate ratio 0.86 (95% Confidence Interval 0.76– 0.98)), and received them for on average 15 days/year less. Compared to White groups, Asian and Black individuals with dementia were no more likely to take an antipsychotic drug, but those that had were prescribed them for 17 and 27 days/year more, respectively (190.8 (179.6– 199.1) and 200.7 (191.1– 206.5) days). Black people were less likely to be prescribed anxiolytics/hypnotics (0.60 (0.44– 0.8)), but the duration these drugs were prescribed was similar across ethnic groups. Asian people were more likely to be prescribed anticholinergic drugs (1.43 (1.19– 1.73)), in analyses unadjusted for cardiovascular comorbidities. Among people without dementia, those in the Asian and Black ethnic groups were less likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs, relative to people from White groups.Conclusion: Among people with dementia, Asian groups received less potentially beneficial symptomatic treatments, and Asian and Black groups were prescribed antipsychotic drugs for longer than White ethnic groups. Our findings may indicate care inequalities.Keywords: ethnicity, prevalence rate ratio, medication, prescription duration

Tra My Pham,1 Irene Petersen,1,2 Kate Walters,1 Rosalind Raine,3 Jill Manthorpe,4 Naaheed Mukadam,5 Claudia Cooper5 1Department of Primary Care and Population Health, University College London, London, UK; 2Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark; 3Department of Applied Health Research, University College London, London, UK; 4Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London, London, UK; 5Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK Objectives: We compared incidence of dementia diagnosis by white, black, and Asian ethnic groups and estimated the proportion of UK white and black people developing dementia in 2015 who had a diagnosis for the first time in a UK-wide study. Methods: We analyzed primary care electronic health records from The Health Improvement Network database between 2007 and 2015 and compared incidence of dementia diagnosis to dementia incidence from community cohort studies. The study sample comprised of 2,511,681 individuals aged 50–105 years who did not have a dementia diagnosis prior to the start of follow-up. Results: A total of 66,083 individuals had a dementia diagnosis (4.87/1,000 person-years at risk, 95% CI 4.83–4.90); this incidence increased from 3.75 to 5.65/1,000 person-years at risk between 2007 and 2015. Compared with white women, the incidence of dementia diagnosis was 18% lower among Asian women (adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.82, 95% CI 0.72–0.95) and 25% higher among black women (IRR 1.25, 95% CI 1.07–1.46). For men, incidence of dementia diagnosis was 28% higher in the black ethnic group (IRR 1.28, 95% CI 1.08–1.50) and 12% lower in the Asian ethnic group (IRR 0.88, 95% CI 0.76–1.01) relative to the white ethnic group. Based on diagnosis incidence in The Health Improvement Network data and projections of incidence from community cohort studies, we estimated that 42% of black men developing dementia in 2015 were diagnosed compared with 53% of white men. Conclusion: People from the black ethnic group had a higher incidence of dementia diagnosis and those from the Asian ethnic group had lower incidence compared with the white ethnic group. We estimated that black men developing dementia were less likely than white men to have a diagnosis of dementia, indicating that the increased risk of dementia diagnosis reported in the black ethnic group might underestimate the higher risk of dementia in this group. It is unclear whether the lower incidence of dementia diagnosis in the Asian ethnic group reflects lower community incidence or underdiagnosis. A cohort study to determine this is needed. Keywords: dementia, ethnicity, primary care, electronic health records