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January 20, 2023 By Ramona Czakert Franson<\/p>\n
Scientists at the University of Alberta have discovered that important risk factors in Alzheimer\u2019s disease affect males and females very differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo types of risk for Alzheimer\u2019s disease work differently for males and females, and dramatically so,\u201d says Mackenzie Heal, neuroscience master\u2019s student in the\u00a0Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute\u00a0graduate program and lead author on the recent research.<\/p>\n
In the large-scale\u00a0study, the researchers used\u00a0neuroinformatics\u00a0to analyze data from 623 older adults over 44 years of their lives, from ages 53 to 97, drawn from the database of the\u00a0Victoria Longitudinal Study.<\/p>\n
The researchers looked at two known Alzheimer\u2019s risk factors \u2014 a gene called bridging integrator 1 (BIN1), and vascular health, measured by pulse pressure. They then compared a known early symptom, episodic memory decline, in males and females. Episodic memory refers to our recollection of everyday events like what we ate for breakfast the previous day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the study, we found that for everybody, memory decline was affected negatively by poor vascular health (high pulse pressure),\u201d Heal explains. \u201cSecond, for those with BIN1 genetic risk, even good pulse pressure couldn\u2019t protect them from memory loss. And third, for males with BIN1 genetic risk as well as poor vascular health, the slopes were a lot steeper, showing a sharp decline in memory, while for females it did not.\u201d<\/p>\n
This finding is unexpected because women are diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease more often than men. There are several reasons for this, one being women live longer than men, but there are other neurobiological and hormonal changes in midlife that also play a role.<\/p>\n
Discovering that these two risk factors don\u2019t have the same impact on women speaks to the importance of taking differences between men and women into account when diagnosing and treating Alzheimer\u2019s, says Heal\u2019s graduate supervisor and study co-author\u00a0Roger Dixon, professor of psychology in the\u00a0Faculty of Science\u00a0and NMHI member.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrecision health approaches are needed, a different treatment may be necessary for a person with one risk profile versus another one, and this has important implications for prevention and treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers looked at 44 years\u2019 worth of data because Alzheimer\u2019s disease has \u201can insidious onset,\u201d Dixon notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means it starts way before we can diagnose it. Not just five years, but 10,15, 20 years before diagnosis, there are changes in the brain that are early signals of the disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing a lot of researchers are doing is aiming to find those individuals who are most at risk for Alzheimer\u2019s disease long before they get it, because once they get it, there is not much we can do except alleviate some of the symptoms,\u201d says Dixon.<\/p>\n
The problem is how to identify the people who are at high risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, there are a number of large-scale longitudinal studies where we follow older adults and produce trajectories of change over time in factors that matter for Alzheimer\u2019s disease \u2014 and this is where Mackenzie\u2019s article falls into it,\u201d says Dixon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need neuroinformatics and analytical technologies that will help us identify combinations of risk that are most problematic for individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Dixon, another complicating factor is that everyone accumulates some risk factors as they age, and there are multiple risk factors that can lead to Alzheimer\u2019s disease. So there\u2019s not a single risk factor that is going to tell researchers who is going to get it or not \u2014 it\u2019s a combination that unfolds over time.<\/p>\n
But if they have the right data, they can track and identify who is most at risk, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many pathways that lead to Alzheimer\u2019s disease, so the study looked at both the genetic risk and vascular health alone and together,\u201d says Dixon. \u201cSome pathways lead toward Alzheimer\u2019s disease and some lead away from it. What we are doing here is finding subtypes, as defined by these risk factors, and identifying which ones are most likely to benefit from what kind of risk intervention or risk reduction intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be able to determine the risk factors way earlier on,\u201d adds Heal, \u201cbecause currently, there is no cure for Alzheimer\u2019s disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study, \u201cBridging Integrator 1 (BIN1, rs6733839) and Sex Are Moderators of Vascular Health Predictions of Memory Aging Trajectories,\u201d was published in the\u00a0Journal of Alzheimer\u2019s Disease<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0The authors also include U of A researchers and NMHI members G. Peggy McFall, Jack H. Jhamandas and David Westaway.<\/p>\n Roger Dixon will speak at a free public lecture,\u00a0<\/em>Hope for Tomorrow: Research Insights Into Alzheimer\u2019s Disease at the U of A<\/em>, on Jan. 26 for Alzheimer\u2019s Awareness Month, presented by the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories and the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n This article was originally posted to Folio the brand journalism site of the University of Alberta.<\/p>\n Used with permission from the University of Alberta.<\/p>\n Image courtesy of Ljupco from Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n