PIXABAY, TAKAZARTMen with mild cognitive impairment stave off steep declines in mental function better than their female counterparts, according to results presented this week (July 21) at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. Women’s cognitive abilities slipped twice as fast as men’s over the course of an eight-year study, Katherine Amy Lin of Duke University Medical Center and her colleagues reported.
“Our findings suggest that men and women at risk for Alzheimer’s may be having two very different experiences,” Lin said in a press release. “These results point to the possibility of as yet undiscovered gender-specific genetic or environmental risk factors that influence the speed of decline.”
More women in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer’s than men, and the new results lend support to the idea that there’s something about the female brain that makes it vulnerable to the neurodegenerative disease. “It’s a very interesting finding, but it’s also still early, so we’re limited in what conclusions we can draw,” Edward Huey, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times.
In another study presented at ...
