Differences in neuroimaging, clinical, cognitive score measures between males and females in Alzheimer's Dementia and Healthy Aging

In this thesis, differences in the brain structure, clinical and cognitive scores as a function of sex (male/female) were studied for the control (healthy aging) and Alzheimer's Dementia (AD) group. Analysis of brain structure volumes, cortical thickness, CSF measures and cognitive scores were performed on the entire ADNI dataset. In healthy aging, the male brain structure shows greater atrophy with age. However, in case of AD, differences in brain structure that could be explained due to sex differences are found to be reduced. This suggests that female brains showed greater atrophy in AD as compared to male brains. Also, the role of APOE4 gene status on brains of control and AD group was studied. APOE4 gene status did not have any significant effect on baseline measurements in the control group, but showed significant difference for left hippocampus volume in the AD group. In addition, APOE4 carriers having a thicker cortex than non carriers for regions in right temporal lobe for AD patients. Role of APOE4 towards AD has been well studied, but the role played by the absence of even a single APOE4 allele in Alzheimer's Dementia must be explored next.