Greater Focus on Sex, Gender Differences in Alzheimer's Needed

A study published in Alzheimer's & Dementia suggests sex and gender differentially affect the risk, clinical presentation, and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and they should be mulled in the planning and analyses of AD studies and development of AD therapeutics, reports Medscape . Among the research priorities in sex and gender differences identified by the researchers are the extent to which findings of sex and gender differences in AD are due to longevity, survival bias, and comorbidities; potential sex-specific risk factors for AD across the lifespan, including oophorectomy, menopause, pregnancy, androgen deprivation therapy, and testosterone loss; the influence of estrogens and hormone therapy on brain function and AD risk, given discrepancies in the clinical literature; potential sex differences in genetic risk factors for AD; sex differences in AD progression and the pathway of change in cognitive function, neuroimaging, cerebrospinal fluid, and blood-based biomarkers of AD; gender differences in caregiving and how the burden of caregiving influences AD risk; and sex and gender disparities in development of AD therapeutics, from preclinical to clinical studies, and in the design of clinical trials. "Having a better understanding of what those differences are and how they are contributing to the disease is important, because ultimately when we have a therapy or when we have a diagnostic tool we need to understand how that is going to work in men and women," says the Alzheimer's Association's Heather Snyder.