Women's Better Memory Masks Alzheimer's Signs

Women with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease tend to have better verbal memory skills than men, which may cause the disorder to go undetected till it is at an advanced stage, a new study has found. Women perform better than men on tests of verbal memory throughout life, which may give them a buffer of protection against losing their verbal memory skills in the precursor stages of Alzheimer’s, known as mild cognitive impairment. This is especially important because verbal memory tests are used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, so women may not be diagnosed until they are further along in the disease. The study included people 254 people with Alzheimer’s disease, 672 people with mild cognitive impairment and 390 people with no thinking or memory problems.

We Are Living Longer, But Sicker

People are getting healthier, living longer – and spending more time often with debilitating illness and disability. The gains in medical and health are masking an increasing amount of illness, disability and death from non-communicable diseases. Death rates from communicable diseases have fallen sharply, adding to a major overall increase in life expectancy. But that extra time appears to be spent more and more unhealthily. Healthy life expectancy had increased just steadily in 191 countries, meaning that people’s average life spans had increased by 6.1 years over the last 15 years. But overall life expectancy has increased by 10.1 years over the same period. That suggests that people are now having longer lives, and much more of those lives spent living with ill health.

The findings echo concerns by some medical professionals that more and more time is being spent prolonging life at the expense of the quality of life that people have in their final years. The study gathered data on 249 causes of death, 315 diseases and injuries and 79 risk factors in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2015. It found that seven out of every 10 deaths last year was caused by conditions like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, chronic kidney damage and Alzheimer’s that was set against falling death rates from communicable diseases like HIV/Aids and malaria. In 2015, 40 million global deaths – 70% of the total – were due to non-communicable diseases. The total number of annual deaths had increased from about 48 million in 1990 to almost 56 million in 2015. At the end of the study period, an estimated 1.2 million deaths were due to HIV/Aids, a reduction of a third since 2005. Malaria deaths had fallen by 37% since 2005, to 730,500 in 2015.