Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a sickness that affects the brain. It causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior.
People with Alzheimer’s may forget things easily, get confused quickly, or have trouble taking care of themselves. It’s a disease that mostly affects older people, but some younger people can get it too.
Gender Differences in Alzheimer’s Disease
Interestingly, Alzheimer’s disease seems to affect men and women in different ways.
For example, women with Alzheimer’s often have a quicker decline in their brain function than men.
But on the other hand, men with Alzheimer’s seem to die from the disease more often than women. Scientists have been trying to figure out why this is.
The Study
A group of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute in Texas decided to investigate this.
They used a new type of computer program that they developed, called “Evolutionary Action Machine Learning” or EAML.
This program helped them look at the genes (the parts of our body’s cells that determine how we grow and develop) in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
How They Did It
With the help of the EAML program, they studied over 5,000 people – some with Alzheimer’s and some without. They were able to identify nearly 100 genes that seem to be linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
These genes included some that we already knew were important for Alzheimer’s, which showed that the program was working well.
They also found new genes that they hadn’t known were connected to Alzheimer’s before. These genes seemed to affect things like inflammation in the brain and how certain brain cells work.
The Results
Then, they used fruit flies to check if these genes really were important in Alzheimer’s disease. They found that some of the genes did indeed affect the flies in ways that are similar to how Alzheimer’s affects humans.
This showed that their method of using the EAML program to find important genes worked well.
Differences Between Men and Women
The researchers then decided to look at the genes in men and women separately. This was because they wanted to understand why Alzheimer’s seems to affect men and women differently.
They found that there were some genes that seemed to be linked to Alzheimer’s disease more in men, and some that seemed to be linked more in women.
Interestingly, they found a group of genes in women that were also linked to breast cancer.
This might suggest that there is a connection between Alzheimer’s disease and breast cancer, which are both more common in women. This could be an important area for future research.
The Future of Alzheimer’s Research
This study shows that it’s important to consider the differences between men and women when studying diseases like Alzheimer’s. It also shows that this new EAML program can be a helpful tool in this research.
In the future, understanding these differences might help us to create better treatments for Alzheimer’s that are specially tailored for each person’s individual genes.
This is sometimes called ‘personalized medicine’, and it’s an exciting area of research that could change the way we treat many different diseases.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about how the Mediterranean diet could protect your brain health, and Vitamin B supplements could help reduce dementia risk.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies that cranberries could help boost memory, and many older people have this non-Alzheimer’s dementia.
The study was published in Nature Communications.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
