WASHINGTON 鈥� Who has a better memory: men or women? It can be the subject of some good-natured arguments within couples, but it can get to be a serious matter as people age. A聽new study suggests an answer.
Jill Goldstein, director of research at the Connors Center for Women鈥檚 Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women鈥檚 Hospital in Boston, is the lead author of a new study on the subject, and she tells that she鈥檚 found 鈥渨omen in general have better verbal memory function than men鈥� across various metrics.
That difference, however, narrows a bit after women go through menopause, and blood tests found a link between declining memory and a loss of the hormone estradiol.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Menopause, and tested 212 men and women between the ages of 45 and 55 memorization, semantic processing (naming as many related words as possible on various subjects) and associative member (matching names to faces and occupations).
It鈥檚 too soon to make any definitive associations, said Dr. JoAnn V. Pinkerton, the executive director of the North American Menopause Society, told CBS News, but this isn鈥檛 the first study to find that women had better memory or to link estradiol to memory in women.
The World Health Organization says that more than 46 million people worldwide have Alzheimer鈥檚 or some other form of dementia, and they think that鈥檒l rise to more than 130 million by 2050.
鈥淚f we don鈥檛 figure out how to treat [Alzheimer鈥檚],鈥� Goldstein said, dealing with it after the fact 鈥渋s going to tank our children鈥檚 economy.鈥�
She added that she thinks 鈥渦nderstanding sex differences will provide clues鈥� to the disease.
