Men more likely to have problems with memory and thinking skills
CHICAGO – When it comes to remembering things, new research shows men are more likely than women to have mild cognitive impairment, the transition stage before dementia. The research will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago, April 12–19, 2008.
“This is one of the first studies to determine the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment among men and women who have been randomly selected from a community to participate in the study,” said study author Rosebud Roberts, MD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. Mild cognitive impairment can also be described as impairment in memory or other thinking skills beyond what’s expected for a person’s age and education.
For the study, 2,050 people living in Olmsted County, Minnesota, who were between the ages of 70 and 89 were interviewed, examined, and given cognitive tests. Overall, 15 percent of the group had mild cognitive impairment.
The study found men were one-and-a-half times more likely to have mild cognitive impairment than women. The finding remained the same regardless of a man’s education or marital status.
“These findings are in contrast to studies which have found more women than men (or an equal proportion) have dementia, and suggest there’s a delayed progression to dementia in men,” said Roberts. “Alternately, women may develop dementia at a faster rate than men.”
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The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert H. and Clarice Smith and Abigail Van Buren Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program.
The American Academy of Neurology, an association of over 21,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to improving patient care through education and research. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.
3 Comments
Hi Mike,
I found your post on Twitter, and enjoyed it. I am from Minnesota, so that connection was interesting, and I am doing the lumosity games just to keep a handle on my experience of my memory and growth at age 60. Mike Logan
Often such effects develop from the basic differences which are that females are slightly smaller and have big difference in sex hormones.
Which would suggest females would tend to be less active which might mean they would get less of the positive effects of exercise on brains. But in general being more active tends to mean more stress which might effect males. The more active males have world wide slightly less average life expectancy which tends to suggest that in effect more activity is on average more risky or damaging.
The big difference in sex hormones and hence the male female imbalance could be one main factor. The sex imbalance is much bigger typically 90:10 than any muscular or size effect. The main effect could again be that females are less motivated to activity and so perhaps less stressed by such activity.
So theres a big question as to what differences the stresses and delights of sex produces on average.
So the studies might be showing that female tend to get dementia from lack of development and males tend to get cognitive impairment from the stresses of excess activity.
I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our world, and I think it is safe to say that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Ethical concerns aside… I just hope that as the price of memory falls, the possibility of copying our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s a fantasy that I daydream about every once in a while.
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