At 65, a woman’s lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is 1 in 5, double the 1 in 10 risk for men of the same age. Yet the biology behind that gap has no clear answer, and a new five-year, $3.4 million National Institute on Aging grant to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science is now pointed directly at the most plausible window: the hormonal turbulence of perimenopause. The working hypothesis is that fluctuating estrogen during this transition disrupts hippocampal circuitry in ways that may accelerate Alzheimer’s pathology, and that the disruption does not hit every woman equally, which makes it both a research problem and a potential intervention target.
Holly Hunsberger, an assistant professor in RFU’s Center for Neurodegenerative Disease and Therapeutics, leads the work. Her team will map how shifting ovarian hormones alter communication between hippocampal cell types and whether those communication failures push the brain toward the changes associated with Alzheimer’s. The hippocampus is the region most visibly damaged early in the disease, and perimenopausal estrogen changes are known to affect the same memory circuits. The clinical observation that some women sail through the transition cognitively intact while others report real difficulties gives the team a natural contrast to study, though the source of that difference remains unknown.
Women account for nearly two-thirds of the roughly 6 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s, a disproportion that life expectancy alone does not fully explain. NIH-supported research points toward biological and hormonal factors as meaningful contributors, which is why understanding the menopausal transition could matter well beyond a single demographic. Approved treatments like donanemab, cleared in July 2024 for early symptomatic Alzheimer’s, work on amyloid pathology after it has accumulated. Research aimed at the hormonal conditions that may prime the brain for that accumulation years earlier operates in a different, upstream register.
The practical payoff from this grant, if the hippocampal circuit findings hold, would be a clearer biological rationale for designing studies that test interventions during perimenopause rather than decades later. Watch whether the trial data Hunsberger’s team generates eventually feeds into clinical protocols for timing or targeting protective therapies in women during that transition.
Source link: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/could-menopause-hold-clues-to-womens-alzheimers-risk-302903917.html
Jon Napitupulu is Director of Media Relations at The Clinical Trial Vanguard. Jon, a computer data scientist, focuses on the latest clinical trial industry news and trends.
