Studies found that women responded better to early interventions with Alzheimer’s disease.

CNN
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After age and genetics, being a woman is the only most important risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease, experts say.

“Two-thirds of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease is the female brain,” said Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at the Brain Health Center at Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt Medical College.

Now, new research has good news about giving women the opportunity to reduce their increased risk. Individual lifestyle interventions such as diet, exercise, stress relief, and sleep hygiene were able to reduce risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease in both men and women, but were even more effective in women.

“Our individually tailored interventions have led to significant improvements in women compared to men across the risk scale for Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease,” said Isaacson, co-author of the paper.

Women also showed greater improvements than men in biomarkers such as hypoglycemia, low LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, which is “bad” cholesterol.

“This study underscores the need for additional, larger studies to better predict baseline cognitive trajectories in aging women and men,” Rudy Tanji said. I am saying. Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School.he He is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“We aim to find a way to stop the disease at the bud stage, so we need to know if preventive and therapeutic strategies work equally well in both men and women. This new study Obviously it takes us a big step towards that goal, “said Tanzi, who was not involved in the study.

The new study tracked a subset of people who participated in a 10-year study designed to test the impact of personal recommendations on cognitive function and risk factors for dementia. The Comparison of efficacy between dementia and Alzheimer’s disease The exam, which started in 2018, is being conducted at the NewYork-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medical Center. In New York City.

After complete blood, physical, cognitive and genetic work-up, the patient received individual genetic counseling and education. Medicines, vitamins and supplements have also been tailored to each person’s unique results. In addition, all participants received personalized lifestyle interventions such as exercise, diet, blood pressure control, sleep hygiene, and stress relief counseling.

All of the CEDAR trials have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, but when the study began, the majority had no signs of cognitive decline, Isaacson said.Of the 154 men and women who participated in the survey, 35 He said he was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer’s disease, but not as serious as “affecting their daily lives.”

Of the original study The main findings were published in 2019.. People with MCI have seen improvements in performance on cognitive tests of memory and thinking by nearly 5 points. When following at least 60% of lifestyle recommendations (on average, at least 12 of 21 different recommendations) for 18 months.

However 2019 study It was found that people with mild cognitive impairment who followed less than 60% of the proposals showed no improvement in cognition. In fact, they continued to decline by an average of 6 points.

Cognitively normal patients with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, called preventive groups, were able to increase “equally impressive” cognitive performance. Average 4.5 points By following at least some of the lifestyle recommendations. It didn’t seem to matter if they followed less than 60% of them, Isaacson said.

“The good news from our study is that there was actually a cognitive improvement in 18 months for both women and men when compared to the control population,” Isaacson said. “Many drugs that have been studied aim to delay the decline in cognitive function, but it is difficult to show improvement in cognitive ability over time.”

About half of CEDAR participants carry at least one APOE gene, which may increase their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.However, this study found no difference in the cognitive benefits of the intervention compared to those with one or two copies of APOE. People without genes are “also encouraging,” Isaacson said.

New research, Published in the Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention Journal on Tuesday Analyzing a subset of participants, taking the original 2019 survey one step further There were differences between men and women when it came to how well lifestyle interventions worked.

“Women have unique risk factors that are very different from men with dementia,” Isaacson said. “Women have a 39% increased risk of dementia when they have central fat buildup.

“And the rapid decline in estrogen during the perimenopausal transition may actually be one of the most influential risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s disease in the brain,” he said. Said.

In a new analysis, women in the prevention group who started the trial without cognitive problems Greater improvements were seen in two areas than in men. One of the two cardiovascular risk scales and the level of good cholesterol, HDL, or high-density lipoprotein that prevents heart disease.

Women with mild cognitive decline, called the early treatment group, showed greater improvement in mean blood glucose levels than men. And two cardiovascular risk scales. This female cohort also showed more significant improvements in some important cholesterol (or lipid) biomarkers than men in the initial treatment group.

Complying with the additional 10% of personalized recommendations for all participants improved the cognitive test by 0.9 points for women and 0.41 points for men.

How Does Reducing Cardiovascular Risk Affect Future Cognition? Experts say that what is good for the heart is good for the brain.

“Vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and diabetes may not be the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, but they are possible. Fast-forward Alzheimer’s disease, “said Isaacson. “I prefer to brake rather than spin the engine on the road to cognitive decline.”

The discovery that women were able to reduce their risk more than men is welcome news, Isaacson said.

“We have shown that treating people in a safe and evidence-based way and using multiple lifestyles and medical interventions can really affect brain health,” he said. ..