Abstract
Thirty-eight Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and nineteen age- and sex-matched healthy elderly controls underwent 18-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography while performing a verbal memory test. Patients had lower overall cortical glucose metabolic rate than controls but did not significantly differ from controls in gender metabolic differences. Female controls showed relatively high temporal metabolic activity, while males showed higher parietal metabolism. Since previous studies of healthy younger adults have shown no significant gender-related differences in the parieto-temporal balance of metabolism, this finding suggests that there is some gender difference in the age-related shift of this balance, which might be due to gender differences in hormonal changes late in life. Male AD patients showed a profound right greater than left asymmetry of cortical metabolism that was greater than that in controls and was absent in female patients. This finding suggests a propensity for left hemispheric involvement by the Alzheimer's disease process in males.
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Siegel, B., Shihabuddin, L. & Buchsbaum, M. Gender Differences In Regional Brain Glucose Metabolism In Alzheimer'S Disease And Normal Aging. Neuropsychopharmacol 11, 285 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.npp.1380214
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.npp.1380214