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Why does Alzheimer's disease affect women more often?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Experts say that medicine is in dire need of new effective methods to combat Alzheimer's disease, so why can't scientists find the key to solving this problem? Or maybe they're just looking in the wrong places?
Scientists associate the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease in women more often than in the male half of humanity with the hormonal background of women, as well as with hysterectomy (removal of the uterus). However, all this is just speculation, the exact answer is not yet known to researchers.
They wonder why women are more susceptible to the disease. Women's brains are much more adversely affected by Alzheimer's than men, whose brains appear to be better able to resist the disease.
New research suggests that gender differences are to blame for the high incidence of the disease among women. And the popular hormone replacement therapy recommended for the disease may cause irreparable harm to women's bodies.
Differences in the structure of the brain between men and women have long been known, but it is unclear why these fundamental characteristics, which may finally provide an answer to Alzheimer's disease, are so often simply ignored.
Dr Glenda Gillies, professor of neuroendocrine pharmacology at Imperial College London, says the area of gender differences between men and women is still a work in progress. But she is one of the few who believes the key to the mystery lies in the differences between the sexes.
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found the same number of tangles in the brains of both sexes. However, why women are more susceptible to the disease than men is unknown.
The female hormone estrogen is on the defensive, but again, no one can understand why the symptoms of the disease are so different.
Research by scientists at the British University of Hertfordshire has confirmed that the male brain is much better than the female brain at resisting progressive senile dementia, which is associated with a decline in mental abilities.
A group of 828 men and 1,238 women were tested for the quality of episodic memory (which is used to recall past events) and semantic memory, which covers current information.
Men with Alzheimer's disease are significantly better than women in five areas of cognitive processing. First and foremost, this concerns the ability to mentally perceive and process external information.