Differences Between Women and Men in Incidence Rates of Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

In the following brief report, we examined gender differences in incidence rates of any dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD) alone, and non-Alzheimer's dementia alone in 16,926 women and men in the Swedish Twin Registry aged 65+. Dementia diagnoses were based on clinical workup and national health registry linkage. Incidence rates of any dementia and AD were greater in women than men, with any dementia rates diverging after age 85 and AD rates diverging around 80. This pattern is consistent with women's survival to older ages compared to men. These findings are similar to incidence rates reported in other Swedish samples.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Swedish Twin Registry; any dementia; gender differences; incidence.

Fig. 1.

Incidence density rates of a) any dementia, b) Alzheimer’s disease, and c) non-AD dementia per 1000 person-years in men and women twins across late adulthood. Loess smoothing lines (with 95% confidence interval) were fit using nonparametric local polynomial regression fitting methods.

Fig. 2.

Kaplan-Meier survival curves of nondemented men and women. The exact probabilities of survival beyond age 90.0 are 0.14 for men and 0.27 for women.