Scientists unsure why women at greater risk
Print Edition
At age 65, seemingly healthy women have about a 1 in 6 chance of developing Alzheimer's during the rest of their lives, compared with a 1 in 11 chance for men. Scientists once thought the disparity was because women tend to live longer — but there’s increasing agreement that something else makes women more vulnerable.
“Women are really at the epicenter of the Alzheimer’s disease crisis,” said Dr Kristine Yaffe of the University of California, San Francisco. “We don’t really understand what this is all about.”
A series of studies presented on Tuesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference uncovered signs of that vulnerability well before Alzheimer’s symptoms hit.
First, Duke University researchers compared nearly 400 men and women with mild cognitive impairment, early memory changes that don’t interfere with everyday activities but that mark an increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s. They measured these people’s cognitive abilities over an average of four years and as long as eight years for some participants.
The men’s scores on an in-depth test of memory and thinking skills declined a point a year while the women’s scores dropped by two points a year.
Age, education levels and even whether people carried the ApoE-4 gene that increases the risk of late-in-life Alzheimer’s couldn’t account for the difference, said Duke medical student Katherine Lin, who co-authored the study with Duke psychiatry professor Dr P. Murali Doraiswamy. The study wasn’t large or long enough to tell whether women were more at risk of progressing to full dementia.
Researchers said larger Alzheimer’s prevention studies should start analyzing gender differences for more clues. Two other studies offered additional hints of differences in women’s brains.
Amyloid plaques are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, and growing levels can help indicate who’s at risk before symptoms ever appear.
“Overall, women have more amyloid than men,” said Dr Michael Weiner of the University of California, San Francisco.
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