Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

Normal aging involves a decline in memory that correlates both with environmental factors and with hippocampal volumetric atrophy and APOE genotype .

Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

Multiple sclerosis (MS) currently occurs two to three times more often in women than in men, thus a gender-related difference in susceptibility to relapsing MS is clinically well established: there is the notion of several mechanisms by which sex hormones might contribute to or modulate brain damage in MS, whether the course of relapsing MS actually differs between men and women is less clear, however.

Is daily more important to understand the factors that influence volumetric changes with increasing age. Although much is known about the general pattern of age effects on brain morphometry, from cross-sectional studies the role of sex in brain aging is still controversial. Aim of this study was test how sex influences the magnitude and direction of age effects on cortical thickness and the volumes of 17 different subcortical brain structures. A total of 1143 healthy participants from seven cross-sectional life-span samples were included in the combined sample.

Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

Posted by Annapaola Prestia (14 settembre 2009) Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

The automobile is the essential, convenient and preferred means of transportation for many older adults. Yet aging for many can make the task of driving more difficult.
In order to compensate for these changes and to continue to drive safely, many older drivers self-regulate their driving, altering or reducing or ceasing it.

Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

Several studies have reported that different cognitive tests are differentially associated with gender. In this study Amieva and colleagues applied a new latent cognitive factor approach to evaluate the impact of gender on cognitive aging and distinguish the effect of this on psychometric tests. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 2228 subjects (1264 women and 964 men) from PAQUID ( Personnes Agèes QUID), a population-based cohort of older adults followed for 13 years with repeated measures of cognition.

The presence of the apolipoprotein E4 allele (APOE4) has been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, APOE4 has been associated with greater hippocampal atrophy in women than in men with AD.
Studies demonstrating this relationship in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), that is considered the prodromal phase for AD, are lacking. Fleisher and coll. evaluated the association among the number of
APOE4 alleles, memory performance, and hippocampal volume in 86 women and

Gender difference in the prevalence and incidence of Alzheimer disease (AD) is well known , although debated . Female gender is an important risk factor for AD but the main cause of this is not known. An article by a Korean group of psychiatrists provides now the opportunity of rethinking some basic aspects of the anthropometry of the women that are possibly relevant for the development of AD, like head circumference and leg length.