In a study from Mayo Clinic, scientists suggest that men may be more likely to have heart conditions like heart disease and stroke and risk factors like diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking in middle age than women, but the negative impact of most of these conditions on thinking and memory skills may be stronger for women.
They found that diabetes, heart disease and dyslipidemia, which is abnormally high levels of fats in the blood, had stronger associations with cognitive decline in women compared to men.
The results showed that midlife cardiovascular conditions and risk factors were associated with midlife cognitive decline, but the association is stronger for women.
In the study, the team looked at 1,857 people without dementia who were between the ages of 50 and 69 at the start of the study. People were given a clinical evaluation every 15 months for an average of three years.
This included nine tests of memory, language, executive function and spatial skills combined to calculate a composite cognitive score.
Overall, 1,465, or 79%, of the participants had at least one heart condition or risk factor. More men than women had at least one risk factor: 83% for men compared to 75% for women.
The team found that most cardiovascular conditions were more strongly associated with cognitive function among women.
For example, heart disease was linked to more than a two-fold greater decline in composite cognitive test scores for women compared to men.
Additionally, the team found that diabetes, heart disease and abnormally high levels of fat in the blood were associated with language score decline only in women.
However, congestive heart failure was linked to language score decline only in men.
The team says more research is needed to examine sex differences in the relationships between the cardiovascular risk factors and specific biomarkers of brain disease like white matter hyperintensities, areas of dead tissue and overall white matter integrity in midlife.
That may help us better understand the sex-specific mechanisms, by which heart conditions and risk factors contribute to cognitive impairment in both women and men.
The study does not prove that women who have cardiovascular risk factors will have a cognitive decline in midlife, but it shows an association.
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The study was conducted by Michelle M. Mielke et al and published in Neurology.
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