More Brain Points

Neuropsychological differences between men and women with Alzheimer's disease.

In a recent study, It was found that, in patients living with Alzheimer’s disease, men outperformed women in 4 out of the 6 neuropsychological measures such as immediate prose memory, semantic verbal fluency, semantic memory and response naming. All of these measures as a whole can be scored to assess where one may fall on the dementia rating scale. The results of where the men and women fell on the scale relative to each other was as follows, men on average had lower dementia scores at about 89.27 and women about 90.86. In healthy individuals, men tend to perform poorer on neuropsychological tests. The study hoped to shed light on the inequality of who Alzheimer’s disease affects. Currently, two-thirds of women are living with Alzheimer’s disease and the number of patients overall is approximated to increase to about 21 million in 50 years. 

In late September, Meharvan Singh came to speak with us about the role of let-7i & how the inhibition of it causes progesterone producing effects. Progesterone is one of the important hormones in the protection of the brain. In the research mentioned in Dr. Singh’s article he discusses how progesterone is a protective hormone that helps to counteract negative effects of stroke, & other traumatic & neurodegenerative neural diseases. In his talk, he discussed that a greater number of women than men have Alzheimer’s disease. He discussed that through his research he has found that one of the contributing factors may be because women when going through menopause women see a drastic decrease in the production of estrogen and progesterone. Because of this dramatic decrease, they no longer are receiving the same amount of protective effects on the brain as before menopause. 

It is important that there is a greater emphasis on understanding gender in regards to this disease as well as what can be done preventatively. If we are better able to understand what allows for the disease to develop and why it is unequally affecting women, beyond what Dr. Singh presented us with, then it is possible to make Alzheimer’s disease prevention apart of women’s health. Unfortunately even with the knowledge that Dr. Singh shared with us about the findings of his study & how the decrease in estrogen in menopause is contributing to the disproportionate effect of women getting Alzheimer’s disease. It is unlikely anything will come about to develop drug therapy for prevention. This is because, as mentioned by Dr. Signh when he came to speak, many large pharmaceutical companies are backing out of the neuroscience field simply because it is too costly, and the clinical studies are not efficacious. Therefore even with the knowledge gained from Dr. Singh’s preclinical research about inhibition of let-7i and production of progesterone & BDNF there will likely not any drug therapy made or changes taken to implement preventative health care for women. 

Works Cited 

Ryan, J. J., Glass Umfleet, L., Kreiner, D. S., Fuller, A. M., & Paolo, A. M. (2018). Neuropsychological differences between men and women with Alzheimer’s disease. International Journal of Neuroscience, 128(4), 342–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207454.2017.1382492

Nguyen, T., Su, C., & Singh, M. (2018). Inhibition enhances progesterone-induced functional recovery in a mouse model of ischemia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(41), E9668-E9677.