Sexual dimorphism in healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment : a DTI study

  • Previous PET and MRI studies have indicated that the degree to which pathology translates into clinical symptoms is strongly dependent on sex with women more likely to express pathology as a diagnosis of AD, whereas men are more resistant to clinical symptoms in the face of the same degree of pathology. Here we use DTI to investigate the difference between male and female white matter tracts in healthy older participants (24 women, 16 men) and participants with mild cognitive impairment (21 women, 12 men). Differences between control and MCI participants were found in fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusion (DR), axial diffusion (DA) and mean diffusion (MD). A significant main effect of sex was also reported for FA, MD and DR indices, with male control and male MCI participants having significantly more microstructural damage than their female counterparts. There was no sex by diagnosis interaction. Male MCIs also had significantly less normalised grey matter (GM) volume than female MCIs. However, in terms of absolute brain volume, male controls had significantly more brain volume than female controls. Normalised GM and WM volumes were found to decrease significantly with age with no age by sex interaction. Overall, these data suggest that the same degree of cognitive impairment is associated with greater structural damage in men compared with women.

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Author:Laurence O’Dwyer, Franck Lamberton, Arun L. W. Bokde, Michael Ewers, Yetunde O. Faluyi, Colby Tanner, Bernard Mazoyer, Desmond O’Neill, Máiréad Bartley, Rónán Collins, Tara Coughlan, David Prvulovic, Harald Hampel
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-255537
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037021
ISSN:1932-6203
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22768288
Parent Title (English):PLoS One
Publisher:PLoS
Place of publication:Lawrence, Kan.
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2012/07/02
Date of first Publication:2012/07/02
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2012/08/28
Volume:7
Issue:(7):e37021
Page Number:12
HeBIS-PPN:357831675
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0