The Women’s Brain Project, an organisation dedicated to exploring sex and gender characteristics in brain diseases, has partnered with Framingham Heart Study Brain Aging Program at Boston University to study sex-specific differences in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) diagnosis. Their research demonstrates that sex differences in neuropsychological test performance may play an important role in the detection of AD in its preclinical stages. This new study, published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia on 26 October 2023, builds on prior work showing sex-specific differences in gender-specific brain function.
The study, which involved 1,787 men and 2,228 women without dementia at baseline and utilised neuropsychological assessment data analysed by machine learning, has delivered insights into how men and women differ in neuropsychological test performance. By considering both standard test scores and Boston Process Approach measures from Framingham Heart Study participants, the researchers employed linear regression, Cox proportional hazards and Extreme Gradient Boosting models to discern these sex-specific distinctions. Overall, this study showed the significant differences in neuropsychological test scores between men and women.
A notable finding was that the Boston Naming Test, which assesses language abilities, is proving to be more sensitive in detecting early cognitive changes in women than in men. In women, lower scores in specific memory tests correlated with a higher risk of AD. These results, the researchers conclude, suggest that neuropsychological tests can be leveraged for developing more sensitive, sex-specific indices for the diagnosis of AD. Link to the publication:
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.13500
