Maria Shriver Sounds the Alarm on Women and Alzheimer's

Journalist and author Maria Shriver founded the Women's Alzheimer's Movement (WAM) to raise awareness that women are at greater risk of Alzheimer's disease and to finance women-based research for the disorder, which seriously lags men's research, according to U.S. News & World Report . "We can't close the knowledge gap unless we do the research," she stressed at a recent WAM luncheon. "And we can't help women on the front lines of this disease without that research." In partnership with the Alzheimer's Association, Shriver authored The Shriver Report , confirming that females received Alzheimer's diagnoses more frequently than males and that women's longer lifespan was not the only contributing factor. WAM has allocated grants to projects that are exploring the gut microbiome's role in Alzheimer's, gender-based genetic analysis, and a possible connection between the disease and sudden hormonal changes. "While we don't have a cure, we do know so much more today about our brain health and what we can do to slow, if not prevent, Alzheimer's disease in the future," Shriver said.