{"id":6027,"date":"2026-04-01T18:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/women-get-alzheimers-more-often-than-men-five-things-the-science-tells-us-stanford-medicine\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T18:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:49:16","slug":"women-get-alzheimers-more-often-than-men-five-things-the-science-tells-us-stanford-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/women-get-alzheimers-more-often-than-men-five-things-the-science-tells-us-stanford-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Women get Alzheimer\u2019s more often than men: Five things the science tells us – Stanford Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 Alzheimer’s <\/a> April 01, 2026<\/span>
By Sarah Williams<\/a>
Women develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease at higher rates than men. Stanford Medicine neurologists explain what science knows about why and the many things it doesn\u2019t yet know.
Two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer\u2019s disease today are women. That sobering data point has been cited by the Alzheimer\u2019s Association<\/a> and others for years but it still tends to catch people off guard.
Why would the devastating degenerative brain disease that impacts 55 million people worldwide affect women differently than men? And are there things women should be doing to protect themselves from what seems to be a greater risk?
With hormone replacement therapy making a comeback<\/a> \u2014 more women are taking estrogen after menopause to offset its effects than five years ago \u2014 many are also wondering what that means for their brain.
The answers are more complicated than you might hope, according to two Stanford Medicine experts who have dedicated much of their careers to Alzheimer\u2019s research.
\u201cI won\u2019t have any easy answers as we talk about this,\u201d warned neurologist Victor Henderson<\/a>, MD.
To sort through what\u2019s known and what still needs studying, we talked to Henderson, professor of epidemiology and population health and director of the NIH Stanford Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Research Center<\/a>, as well as neurologist Michael Greicius<\/a>, MD, founding director of the Stanford Memory Disorders Center<\/a>.
Here are the key takeaways.
The two-thirds statistic is real, but it can be misleading. Alzheimer\u2019s is an age-associated disease, with rates drastically increasing as people hit their 70s and 80s. Studies have shown that nearly a third of people over age 85 have some form of dementia, as do up to half of all people in their 90s.
Because women outlive men, there are simply more women in the highest-risk age groups (there are more than twice as many women over age 90 than men, for instance).
\u201cThe main difference in prevalence, the actual numbers of women who develop Alzheimer\u2019s compared with men, is mostly due to longevity differences,\u201d Henderson said.
Still, studies that control for age have found some differences based on sex, though not the two-to-one ratio that the raw numbers suggest.
\u201cI think women at any given age are a little bit more likely to get Alzheimer\u2019s than men are,\u201d Greicius said. \u201cBut it\u2019s probably more like three women diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s for every two men.\u201d
Other dementias tell a different story, Greicius points out. Lewy body dementia \u2014 the second most common neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer\u2019s \u2014 actually skews in the opposite direction, affecting roughly twice as many men as women.
APOE4 is the strongest known genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer\u2019s, but it turns out this increased risk is steeper for women.
Greicius and Henderson, working together, were among the first to document this difference<\/a> in 2014. APOE4, they found, raised dementia risk 81% in women but only 27% in men. Greicius said this may help explain part of the overall sex disparity in Alzheimer\u2019s rates.
His team is also exploring a possible explanation for why APOE4 may convey different risk based on sex. There is a stretch of DNA near the APOE gene where the hormone estrogen can directly bind, preliminary research has suggested. That means that the presence or absence of estrogen could impact how much of the APOE protein gets produced, although he notes more studies are needed to show whether this is the case.
Greicius said he makes sure to counsel women about their increased risk when they are carriers of the APOE4 gene.
\u201cIncreasingly, I make sure to weave that into my conversation, because we have a lot of data now supporting that differential risk with APOE4 in men and women,\u201d he said.
The presence of the estrogen binding site near the APOE4 gene isn\u2019t the only reason to think that estrogen might be involved in Alzheimer\u2019s. There are receptors for the hormone scattered throughout the brain, and the period around menopause \u2014 when estrogen levels in women plummet \u2014 coincides with when Alzheimer\u2019s-associated changes in the brain are thought to begin accumulating.
\u201cThis could all be coincidental,\u201d said Henderson, who has spent much of his career looking at the interplay between estrogen and dementia. \u201cBut there is a fair amount of observational evidence that the loss of estrogen at menopause might be associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease several decades later.\u201d
So, does hormone replacement therapy, which boosts levels of estrogen, prevent dementia?
When the Women\u2019s Health Initiative results came out in the early 2000s, early data from a sub-study suggested that certain hormone therapies could do the reverse, raising dementia risk. But more recent trials \u2014 especially those in which estrogen replacement was started earlier \u2014 have not shown the same risk.
\u201cUnfortunately, we\u2019re not sure about the impacts of hormone replacement right now,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cBy and large, most clinical trials don\u2019t show much cognitive benefit or harm either way.\u201d
Both Henderson and Greicius say dementia risk probably shouldn\u2019t be driving the HRT decision, even in women at heightened risk of Alzheimer\u2019s.
\u201cI don\u2019t recommend menopausal hormone therapy to prevent dementia, but if a woman is already taking it for other reasons, I don\u2019t think the dementia risk should scare her off,\u201d Henderson said.
For most of medical research history, animal model studies were conducted predominantly in males, and early human trials weren\u2019t much better. Female hormone cycles were seen as a variable that made results harder to interpret.
\u201cNinety-nine percent of mouse studies in Alzheimer\u2019s disease were conducted in male mice only,\u201d Greicius said. \u201cWhich seems laughable now.\u201d
Today, more women are included in Alzheimer\u2019s research studies, but Henderson said most studies aren\u2019t designed to analyze results by sex, making it hard to know whether drugs have a different impact. In part, that hesitation is because if a study clearly illustrated different effects in men and women, it might complicate how the drugs are advertised or prescribed, Henderson said.
\u201cPharmaceutical companies are supposed to do this, but some don\u2019t because they don\u2019t want it to affect their marketing down the road,\u201d he said.
After clinical trial results are published, he adds, analysis sometimes reveals small differences, such as with lecanemab, the drug recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for mild Alzheimer\u2019s. The published data suggested women might benefit less than men do from the drug. More research is needed to show whether that is the case, since the trial wasn\u2019t designed to answer that question.
For now, Henderson and Greicius say they will continue to treat Alzheimer\u2019s the same in men and women \u2014 until a time comes when well-designed trials conclude they should do otherwise.
The good news is that most of what\u2019s known about reducing Alzheimer\u2019s risk applies equally to women and men: exercise regularly, manage blood pressure, stay socially and cognitively engaged, get enough sleep, and don\u2019t smoke. None of that advice changes based on sex.
But Henderson notes that because men and women tend to live differently, the same risk factors often play out differently in practice. Where people work, what they eat, how much they exercise, how much air pollution they\u2019re exposed to \u2014 all of these vary systematically between men and women, and all have been linked to dementia risk.
\u201cIt\u2019s not just biological differences that could explain why women may get more Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d he said, \u201cbut lifestyle differences too.\u201d
That means that the gap in Alzheimer\u2019s rates between women and men isn\u2019t entirely in their DNA; it\u2019s shaped by factors that can change. Women today are more educated and health-aware than previous generations, and there\u2019s already evidence that\u2019s making a difference: Dementia rates have been declining in recent decades.
\u201cThe modifiable risk factors for dementia \u2014 things like blood pressure, exercise, staying socially engaged \u2014 if we can move the needle on those, we should be able to reduce the burden of Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cAnd women stand to gain from that.\u201d
About Stanford Medicine<\/b>
Stanford Medicine<\/a> is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine<\/a> and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu<\/a>.
Freelance writer
 Aging & Geriatrics <\/a> September 22, 2025 <\/span>
The genetic variant APOE4, carried by one-fifth of the world\u2019s people, substantially boosts Alzheimer\u2019s risk. But scientists have been puzzled about how to reverse that risk: punch up the gene variant\u2019s potency, or smack it down? Now we know.
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