Cognitive deterioration does not affect men and women equally, according to a study by the University of Zaragoza that includes researchers from the IIS Aragón

The research concludes that less schooling currently increases the memory and orientation problems of women at an advanced age.

This work has been carried out by six researchers from the departments of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and Medicine and Psychiatry of the University of Zaragoza, the neuroscience program of the Aragón Health Research Institute and the Biomedical Research Center in Red de Salud. Mental (Cybersam)

Cognitive impairment does not affect men and women equally And, contrary to a widespread belief, not all people have memory loss or alterations in thinking as they get older. Furthermore, less schooling during childhood currently increases the problems suffered by women. These are two of the conclusions of a study led by the University of Zaragoza in which 2.403 residents of the Aragonese capital have been monitored for 12 years.

Research reveals that 81,7% of the men who participated and 50,2% of the women did not suffer a decline in their cognitive abilities. The work began in 1994, when they had an average age of 69,8 years and they, 70,6. «It is an encouraging and positive fact that people maintain overall performance of their cognitive capacity over time and it has pleasantly surprised us.«explains Elena Lobo, principal investigator of this study and professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Aragonese public campus.

In both men and women, the research concludes that People who have gone further in school maintain better cognitive health throughout life. Hence, half of women suffer declines in their cognitive function compared to only 20% of men. Lobo is convinced that in current generations, who have had more equal access to education, "this distance between the sexes will be much smaller."

Other differences found indicate that cognitive impairment In men it is more associated with dependency for daily activities. Conversely, in the women is linked to a greater extent with diabetes and depression.

The results of the study suggest that strategies to maintain a good cognitive level may be different from those to prevent its degeneration; and, in any case, different between the male and female groups.

However, Lobo also adds that aging is a "very heterogeneous process" intra- and interindividually because the same person can have peaks at different times in their life. 

This work has been carried out by six researchers from the departments of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and Medicine and Psychiatry of the University of Zaragoza, from the neuroscience program of the Aragon Health Research Institute and the Biomedical Research Center in Mental Health Network (Cybersam). 

Throughout the 12 years that it has lasted, the 2.403 Zaragoza residents who have participated have been interviewed in their homes on four occasions by medical students in their final years. 

First study to reveal differences between sexes

The results were presented this past weekend at the forum that brought together Cibersam in Zaragoza. They have also been published in the 'American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry', the most important international journal on the subject of mental health in the elderly. 

It is, highlighted by the University of Zaragoza, the first study in the international literature that documents differences in the cognitive trajectories of both sexes. It confirms the initial hypothesis that men and women age differently from the point of view of their cognitive functions. In men, four differentiated trajectories have been identified, each of which groups together subpopulations of people with a similar pattern of cognitive aging, and in women, three have been identified, different from the previous ones.

This research has been carried out within the Zarademp project, a epidemiological study on dementia and depression in the elderly in the Aragonese capital, which has completed to date five waves of serial examinations of a sample of close to 5.000 people, representative of the general population aged 55 or over.

Source: Heraldo de Aragón