Amaryllis Tsiknia, United States of America
UC San Diego NeurosciencesPresenter of 2 Presentations
LIVE DISCUSSION
SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE RISK AND CORTICAL TAU
Abstract
Aims
Cardiovascular health plays a pivotal role in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Traditional cardiovascular risk factors impact cardiovascular health to different extents in men and women. Given recent evidence that women on the AD trajectory bear a larger burden of tau pathology than men, we investigated whether cardiovascular disease risk differentially impacts cortical tau in men and women.
Methods
We calculated the Framingham Heart Study Cardiovascular Disease (FHS-CVD) risk algorithm at baseline in 172 participants from the AD Neuroimaging Initiative study. Our sample was composed of 113 cognitively normal participants and 59 participants with mild cognitive impairment. We quantified cortical tau using Flortaucipir PET acquired on average 5.51 ± 1.3 years after baseline FHS-CVD assessment. We used linear regression analyses to test for interaction effects between sex and FHS-CVD on subsequent cortical tau, correcting for age, APOE e4 genotype and time between initial FHS-CVD assessment and tau PET.
Results
We found that women had significantly higher levels of tau then men in areas including BRAAK 3&4, (p = 0.001; BRAAK 5&6,(p < 0.0001) regions. We found significant interaction effects of sex and FHS-CVD on subsequent BRAAK 3&4 (p=0.017) and BRAAK 5&6 tau (p=0.019). When stratifying by sex, higher baseline FHS-CVD measurement was associated with higher cortical tau in women (BRAAK 3&4, p=0.029; BRAAK 5&6, p=0.026) but not men.
Conclusions
These results suggest that despite being at lower cardiovascular disease risk, women are more heavily impacted by the effects of cardiovascular risk on tau pathology than men.