(Health.com) Men in their 70s and 80s may be more likely than women of the same age to develop the memory loss and cognitive problems that often herald Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has found.
In the study, which appears in the journal Neurology, Mayo Clinic researchers examined 1,450 elderly people in Minnesota every 15 months for an average of three and a half years. During that time, 7.2% of the men and 5.7% of the women developed the mental-function problems known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with or without any accompanying memory loss.
The fact that men appear to have higher rates of MCI but lower rates of dementia may hold important clues for preventing or delaying cognitive decline, the researchers suggest. The lead author of the study, Rosebud Roberts, a professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn, says that women with MCI may progress to dementia faster than men, causing them to be undercounted during the MCI phase. Physical activity, for instance, is believed to benefit men differently than women [...]. In women, exercise appears to be more likely to prolong life, he says, while in men it’s more likely to improve brain function.
