Change in Memory Test Scoring Could Help Catch Alzheimer's Earlier in Women

A study in Neurology suggests a slight modification to memory test scoring could help spot early-stage Alzheimer's in women, reports NBC News . The adjustment would account for women's lifelong advantage in verbal memory performance, and enable researchers to detect more women with the Alzheimer's precursor, amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). The same verbal ability that allows women to score higher on memory tests helps them offset Alzheimer's damage to the brain longer, but the University of California, San Diego's Erin Sundermann notes this "may actually put women at a disadvantage when it comes to diagnosing Alzheimer's at an early stage. If we just adjust the criteria to be sex specific to account for this female advantage, our results suggest it would improve diagnostic accuracy in both women and men." Going by the previous criteria means 10 percent of men would be wrongly identified as having aMCI, but the adjustment would place them in the normal category — while another 10 percent of women would be added to the aMCI category. Sundermann said early diagnosis gives women more time to plan for future worsening of symptoms, and an opportunity to change their lifestyle to decelerate the disease's progress.