Women are nearly twice as likely as men to develop Alzheimer’s disease, but scientists haven’t locked down what drives that disparity.
New research at UC San Diego seeks to help doctors understand why.
“There’s a big open question mark around menopause,” said Judy Pa, PhD, professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study.
Pa and colleagues within the UC system have received two major research awards, granted over three years, as part of a more than $50 million investment in women’s brain health led by Wellcome Leap CARE and other organizations.
These awards will fund an investigation into how menopause and hormone therapy may influence women’s risk of dementia, as well as the development of an artificial intelligence tool for earlier detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
The hormone therapy project led by Pa will use existing datasets to emulate a clinical trial, allowing researchers to study how women who initiate menopausal hormone therapy compare over time with similar women who do not.
By analyzing long-term health and cognitive outcomes, the team hopes to generate stronger evidence about whether hormone therapy may alter dementia risk and which therapies may be most appropriate for women with different menopausal experiences.
The grants reflect a broader wave of attention to a field that has been overlooked for decades.
“There’s been this silence around studying menopause science for the last 25 years,” Pa said. “I’m grateful that I get to work in this area and there’s a revival of interest.”
Much of the silence Pa described traces back to the Women’s Health Initiative, a large federal trial whose results, released in 2002, found that postmenopausal women on hormone therapy had higher rates of breast cancer and cardiovascular events than women on a placebo. The findings reversed decades of assumptions that hormone therapy could prevent disease in older women, and the fallout was immediate, according to Pa.
“It brought everything to a full stop,” Pa said. “Physicians, clinicians, practitioners and providers stopped offering it (hormone therapy), stopped prescribing it because they were worried about the increase in breast cancer for their patients.”
More than two decades later, newer data, including re-analyses of the original trial and subsequent studies, have softened that picture, suggesting risks depend on when therapy begins. But Pa said the damage to research and clinical practice has been lasting.
“Women have been suffering for over two decades now, having a very difficult time getting medications that are needed for this menopausal transition,” she said.
And the knowledge gap extends well beyond hormone therapy.
“We know almost nothing about menopause,” Pa said, adding that basic questions — such as how symptom severity, treatment choices or the age of menopause onset shape later brain health — remain largely unanswered.
Another newly funded study, the Longitudinal Menopause Project, will recruit women ages 40 to 55 and follow them before, during and after menopause, creating what Pa says could become a flagship program for perimenopausal brain health research in the United States.
The project is a collaboration between UCSD, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Barbara’s Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative, with Emily Jacobs at UCSB, a neuroscientist with training in neuroendocrinology, taking the lead.
“We always say, science first, egos last,” Pa said of the partnership. “We go into all of these collaborations trying to do the very best work that we can. We have momentum and we’re trying to capitalize on that.”
That momentum extends to policy. UCSB’s Jacobs has also worked with California legislators on Assembly Bill 432, which would mandate menopause education in medical school curricula statewide. The bill narrowly failed after a veto but is being reintroduced, Pa said, noting that menopause training currently is not required for any medical specialty, including OB-GYNs.
“An event that happens for every single woman in the world is not required medical training,” she said.
Still, Pa said she wants women to come away with a sense of agency. She likens brain health to a savings account: the steps women take now to protect their brains compound over time, building toward greater resilience later in life, much like interest accruing on a long-term investment.
“Women are at greater risk, but they can be empowered with this knowledge and say, ‘These are the things I can do for myself now that will help my brain later,’” Pa said.
“I always tell folks it is never too early to start to protect your brain and it’s truly never too late.”
Hence then, the article about 50m backs push by uc researchers to tackle big open question mark in women s brain health was published today ( ) and is available on Times of San Diego ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( $50M backs push by UC researchers to tackle ‘big open question mark’ in women’s brain health )
Also on site :