Gender-Specific Differences in Cognitive Profiles of Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: Results of the Prospective Dementia Registry Austria (PRODEM-Austria).

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common age-related diseases in the western world. Gender differences in neuropsychological functions are seldom evaluated in AD. OBJECTIVE: Recent investigations suggested that gender may be an important modifying factor in the development and progression of AD. We examined gender-specific differences in the pattern of cognitive dysfunction of patients with mild to moderate AD. METHODS: We examined 113 males (mean age 78) and 173 females (mean age 80) of the prospective registry on dementia in Austria (PRODEM). We analyzed differences in the cognitive profile between male and female AD patients on the CERAD-Plus test battery. RESULTS: We found gender-related differences in the neuropsychological domains of verbal learning; the women tended to perform worse than men. Controlling for depression, stage and duration of dementia, and the level of education, there was still a significant effect of gender on verbal episodic memory. CONCLUSION: There is an interaction between gender and cognitive function, most notable in verbal episodic memory; female patients in the early stage of AD performed worse on verbal episodic memory than men. This indicates that the gender-specificities of neuropsychological functions should be given careful consideration in clinical diagnosis of dementia.