Women With Dementia Deteriorate Twice as Fast as Men, Study Says

By Kaitlyn Thompson HERWriter

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Women’s decline into dementia occurred much more quickly than it did for men when approximately 400 people with mild cognitive impairment were observed, according to new research released July 21, 2015.

Co-authors of the new study, Katherine Amy Lin, Wrenn Clinical Research Scholar in Alzheimer’s disease at Duke University Medical Center, and Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, professor of psychiatry at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, shared their findings at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Washington.

It was already established that women develop Alzheimer’s more frequently than men, with almost two-thirds of all cases being female. However, the Duke researchers were surprised by just how differently women and men develop dementia.

“Our findings suggest that men and women at risk for Alzheimer’s may be having two very different experiences. Our analyses show that women with mild memory impairments deteriorate at much faster rates than men in both cognitive and functional abilities,” said Lin at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, women over 65 who do not have Alzheimer’s disease have a 1-in-6 chance of developing the disease later in life, while men of the same age only have a 1-in-11 chance of developing the disease.

Mild cognitive impairment is defined as a measurable deduction in the ability to think clearly or remember past events, but not so significant that it hinders daily activities.

The Duke researchers measured the quickness of cognitive decline after individuals began experiencing mild cognitive changes using the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive scale, which is one of the most frequently used tests to measure cognition in clinical trials.

The ADAS-Cog is a test with 11 parts used to measure cognation, with each part ranked on a numbered scale from zero to 70.

When completing the ADAS-Cog testing and adjusting for other factors like genetic predisposition, the researchers found that women’s cognitive abilities declined twice as quickly as men’s in a year span, with a score of 2.3 for women and 1.05 for men.

“I was surprised by how striking the difference was - that women appear to decline - that is, greater point change per year in their performance on cognitive, functional evaluation - twice as fast as men,” said Lin.

“However, I would still see these findings as preliminary, since to the best of my knowledge it is the first to examine cognitive and functional progression in mild cognitive impairment, while accounting for other factors that could affect decline such as genetic predisposition, age, education, etc., so comprehensively.”

Now that the statistically significant difference between men and women’s cognitive deterioration has been brought to light, Lin said that this is just the beginning of genetic-specific dementia research.

“I hope that our study will encourage further research into why women with mild cognitive impairment might be more vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease than men with the condition. In the future, I hope to see both follow-up on our study and more gender-specific research in general. We need to look into underlying reasons for why this could be happening - both biological and non-biological,” said Lin.

Lin said she plans to do related research in the future on whether or not women are more at risk for developing Alzheimer’s related brain damage, by studying amyloid, the plaques that accumulate in the brain between neurons.

“At this time, the benefit [for women] comes through the interest that this research has generated. If we can encourage interest in pursuing further studies or perhaps gender-specific clinical trials, this could be a significant step towards investigating the many questions we still have,” said Lin.

Sources:

“Women with mild cognitive impairment decline twice as fast as men with the condition”. Alzheimer’s Association, Retrieved July 23, 2015.
https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2015/Tues8amET.asp

“Dementia Develops Faster in Women Than in Men, Study Suggests”The New York Times, Retrieved July 23, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/health/women-decline-toward-dementia-f...

WOMEN WITH MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT DECLINE TWICE AS FAST AS MEN WITH THE CONDITION-Press release.
Alzheimer’s Association. Retrieved July 23, 2015.
https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2015/Tues8amET.asp

“2015 Alzheimer's disease facts and figures”. Alzheimer’s Association, July 23, 2015,
http://www.alz.org/facts

Retrieved July 27, 2015
by Michele Blacksberg RN
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