Memory problems more common in men
Mild cognitive impairment, which may include problems with memory or thinking beyond that explained by the normal ageing rate, is more common among men than women, say researchers in an article published in the medical journal Neurology.
People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can function in everyday activities, but they may have problems with memory, such as remembering people’s names, losing the flow of a conversation, and not remembering where they left things.
In this latest study, researchers found that men are 1.5 times more likely to have mild cognitive impairment than women. MCI frequently leads to Alzheimer’s disease.
Study author, Dr Ronald Petersen, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota said, “This is the first study conducted among community-dwelling persons to find a higher prevalence of MCI in men. If these results are confirmed in other studies, it may suggest that factors related to gender play a role in the disease.
“For example, men may experience cognitive decline earlier in life but more gradually, whereas women may transition from normal memory directly to dementia at a later age but more quickly.”
The finding that the frequency of mild cognitive impairment is greater in men was unexpected, since the frequency of Alzheimer’s disease is greater in women.
In other research, Scientists have discovered that measuring the “memory centers” of the brain and comparing them to expected size is effective in predicting the progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers at the University of California (UC), San Diego School of Medicine, say that a fully-automated procedure called Volumetric MRI can be readily used in clinics to measure brain atrophy as well as possibly help physicians predict decline in some cognitively impaired patients. Their findings were published in the journal Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders.
“Use of this procedure is like bringing the experience of an expert neuro-radiologist to any clinic that has the right software,” said Dr James Brewer, assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Departments of Radiology and Neurosciences.
“These fully-automated and rapid methods of measuring medial temporal lobe volumes may help clinicians predict cognitive decline in their patients, and have the potential to influence how neurology is practiced.”
“Our goal was to find neuron-imaging measures of change that reflected more than merely a person’s advancing age, but instead correlated tightly with how a person’s cognitive status worsens over time,” said co-author Dr Michael Rafii, Assistant Professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego.
“It’s too early to draw a definitive comparison, but it appears that these early changes – especially shrinking of the hippocampus – may offer a robust biological marker for change.”
Medial temporal lobe atrophy has been associated with increased risk for conversion of MCI to Alzheimer’s disease. However, until now, studies have focused only on measurements of the brain’s hippocampus. The extent to which volumes of the amygdala, the section of the brain associated with emotions, and the nearby temporal horn could predict cognitive decline was unknown.
For more than a year, researchers at the Memory Disorders Clinic at UC San Diego Medical Center have been successfully using a fully computerized procedure that takes images from the MRI scanner and translates them into quantitative values, according to Dr Rafii, the clinic’s director.
“These values objectively measure the hippocampus and amygdala, and early data confirm previous findings that these brain areas may atrophy early in Alzheimer’s disease and can offer a clinical marker for change,” said Dr Rafii.
The fluid-filled temporal horn increases as the hippocampus shrinks, and these complementary measurements may correlate closely with how a patient’s cognitive status worsens over time, he added.
