Hi, I’m Dr. Ken Sharlin with Sharlin Health & Neurology. We’re going to talk a little bit today about the remarkable differences in Alzheimer’s disease when it comes to looking at the risk for women compared to men.
Now, there are about 46.8 million people worldwide affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and in the United States, there are 5.6 million Americans, of which the vast majority, 5.4 million, have what is called late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The reason this is important is that there’s a very strong association between the risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease being a woman and a specific gene called ApoE4. This ApoE4 gene is present in about 20% to 30% of the population. So, if you’re listening to this video now and you think about a couple of your close friends, chances are, one of you has at least one copy of this gene. And if you’re a woman and you have one copy of this gene, your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be as much as four times that of the general population.
So this is a great concern, and we’ll talk a little bit more about why that is and what you might be able to do about it.