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Compared to Men, Women Bear Six Times More of the Cost of Alzheimer’s Disease [PSMag.com]

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Women make up two-thirds of the 5.1 million people currently suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in the United States. But that figure doesn’t fully capture the disease’s disproportionate impact on women, according a new analysis of the economic costs of the disease. Thanks to the fact that women are more likely to develop the disease themselves and to take care of a loved one who has been diagnosed with it, the researchers estimate that, per capita, women bear six times more of the cost of care for Alzheimer’s than men do over the course of their lifetimes.

A woman’s overall risk of developing Alzheimer’s is almost twice that of a man’s. Until recently, that disparity was attributed largely to the fact that women tend to live longer and are therefore overrepresented among the elderly, who are mostly likely to be struck by the disease. But researchers have discovered that women are at higher risk even after taking longevity into account. Research by Dr. Richard Lipton, who heads the Einstein Aging Study at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has found that that women in their 70s are twice as likely as men in the same age to develop Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. After age 80, men and women are at similar risk for the rest of their lives.

 

[For more of this story, written by Maya Dusenbery, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...havior/thats-some-bs]

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