Another twist of the knife in being the male of the species.
During ageing, men experience a greater reduction in volume across more regions of the brain than women do, according to a longitudinal study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1. The authors suggest this means that age-related brain changes do not explain why women are more frequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease than men are.
“It’s really important that we understand what happens in the healthy brain so that we can better understand what happens when people get these neurodegenerative conditions,” says Fiona Kumfor, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Sydney, Australia. This study adds to scientists’ understanding of typical brain ageing, she adds.
Nearly twice as many women are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease as men, and ageing is the biggest risk factor for the disease. This has prompted research into age-related sex differences in the brain. “If women’s brains declined more, that could have helped explain their higher Alzheimer’s prevalence,” says co-author Anne Ravndal, a PhD student at the University of Oslo.