Women have a dementia problem. Across the US and most of Europe, women are around twice as likely as men to develop dementia. In the UK, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia have been women’s leading cause of death for over a decade.
Yet, despite all that, we’re not always that great at spotting it in women. A large part of the issue is that dementia is about more than just memory loss, with men and women displaying symptoms in different ways.
A new study from the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University found that women with dementia can maintain seemingly normal verbal memory for around 2.7 years longer than men, despite having the same Alzheimer's-related brain changes.
Biases can make it difficult for women to have their dementia officially diagnosed - Credit: Getty
That matters because several tests used by doctors rely on verbal memory to detect early dementia. As a result, they can miss the first signs of cognitive decline in women. It is often only around three years later, when women's cognitive abilities decline much more rapidly – by 25–50 per cent more than men's – that these tests begin to detect the problem.
