Fifty million people are currently living with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and experts estimate that there may be as many as three times more people who have not yet been diagnosed.
Both men and women develop Alzheimer’s, but two-thirds of all patients are women, and women are frequently the primary caregivers for spouses, partners, parents and others with the disease.
For too long, the disproportionate number of women patients was dismissed as simply the consequence of women’s longer life expectancy, but improved epidemiological and biological evidence has taught us that this explanation is insufficient.
Alzheimer’s disease is especially cruel to women; they are more often afflicted by the disease than men, and also provide most of the care for those with the disease.
For more than a century after Alzheimer’s was first described in a female patient—Auguste Dieter—potential sex differences in risk factors and drivers of the disease went largely unexamined. Female animals were rarely included in basic research, and women were often excluded from clinical trials. It was not until 2016 that the National Institutes of Health began requiring researchers to consider both sexes in their studies.
Understanding how Alzheimer’s develops differently in men and women will benefit all Alzheimer’s patients—factors that increase resilience or risk in either men or women can be leveraged in the treatment of both. CureAlz has required our scientists to use both male and female animals in their investigations. Specifically examining potential sex-driven differences is vital, as is the inclusion of both sexes in every stage of Alzheimer’s research, from animal models to human cell and tissue cultures to clinical trials.
