Alzheimer's and Women

Alzheimer's may be more common in people whose mothers had the illness.
The New York Times (3/1, D6, Bakalar) reports in "Vital Signs" that Alzheimer's disease is "more common in people whose mothers had the illness than in those whose fathers had it -- and the evidence can be found in the brains of people who are still healthy," according to a study published in the March 1 issue of Neurology.
"Healthy older adults with no cognitive problems whose mothers had Alzheimer's disease had more brain shrinkage than those who had a father or no parent with the disease," Bloomberg News (3/1, Ostrow) reports. For the study, "researchers analyzed 53 people ages 60 and older who had no signs of dementia." Next, participants were then "given brain scans and cognitive tests over the two-year study."
The Los Angeles Times (2/28, Kaplan) "Booster Shots" blog reported that the investigators then "compared those brain scans with those of 32 other healthy adults in the same age group with no family history of Alzheimer's." Although "none of the subjects exhibited any outward signs of dementia, the brain scans revealed that the 11 people whose mothers had Alzheimer's had lost significantly more gray matter over the two-year period than the 10 people whose fathers had the disease and compared with the 32 people with two healthy parents." Notably, that cell loss was "especially pronounced in two areas of the brain -- the left precuneus (which plays a role in episodic memory, among other functions) and the left parahippocampas gyrus (which is involved in encoding and retrieving memories)." WebMD (2/28, Doheny), HealthDay (2/28, Goodwin) and the Wall Street Journal (3/1, D2, Dooren, subscription required) also covers the story.