Alzheimer’s in women: Could midlife stress play a role?

PESHAWAR (Agencies): For reasons as yet unknown, Alzheimer’s disease is more likely to affect women. However, new research sheds light on the potential impact of stress on their cognitive functioning. Alzheimer’s disease is the mostcommon type of dementia. Affecting millions of people in the United States, this progressive condition has no proven cause, treatment, or cure.
What researchers do know, however, is that women bear the brunt of the condition. Almost two-thirds of U.S. individuals with Alzheimer’s are women, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. However, only theories exist to explain this difference; there is no concrete evidence. One understudied area — say researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD — is the role of stress on cognitive function.
Previous research has shown that age can have a significant impact on women’s stress response, and that a stressful life experience can causememory and cognitive issues. However, these problems tend to be short term. Researchers have now decided to look at the relationship between stress and the long term cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s. “A normal stress response causes a temporary increase in stress hormones like cortisol and, when it’s over, levels return to baseline and you recover,” says Cynthia Munro, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
“But with repeated stress, or with enhanced sensitivity to stress, your body mounts an increased and sustained hormone response that takes longer to recover [from]. We know if stress hormone levels increase and remain high, this isn’t good for the brain’s hippocampus — the seat of memory.” Data from more than 900 Baltimore residents have revealed a link that could be key in proving why women aged 65 and above have a 1 in 6chance of developing Alzheimer’s. The team’s findings now appear in theInternational Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
The residents had participated in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. Participants first joined the study in the early 1980s. Following enrollment, they took part in interviews and checkups on three separate occasions: once in 1982, once during 1993–1996, and once during 2003–2004. The average age of the participants during the 1990s was 47, and 63% were women. During their third interview of four, the researchers asked each participant if they had experienced a traumatic event in the past year. Such events included rape, physical attacks, threats, natural disasters, or watching another person sustain an injury or lose their life.
A second question asked if they had had a stressful life experience in the same time period, such as divorce, the death of a friend or family member, severe illness, marriage, or retirement. The number of men and women reporting a traumatic experience was similar (22% of men and 23% of women). The same went for stressful life events, with 47% of men and 50% of women saying that they had experienced at least one during the previous year.
At their third and fourth appointments, the participants all took a standardized memory test. One notable activity involved having to remember 20 words that testers spoke aloud and repeating them straight away, as well as again 20 minutes later. After analyzing their answers, the researchers determined a women-only relationship between stressful life events during midlife and a greater deterioration in remembering and recognizing words.