Alzheimer's disease, which is characterized by progressive brain deterioration and leads to dementia, affects about 300,000 Canadians and 500,000 Americans under the age of 65.  

Recent study has shown that Alzheimer's affect women more adversely as compared to men. Michael S. Rafii, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Memory Disorders Clinic and an attending neurologist at the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego said that there are evidence that AD affects women differently than men.

Rafii said that many studies of gender differences in cognition have pointed to greater language deficits in women with Alzheimer's disease as compared to men.

He added that naming and word-recognition skills have been reported to be more adversely affected in female patients with AD than in male patients, and the differences have been shown to be sustained over time.

The study also revealed that male patients exhibit greater behavioral problems as compared to female patients in wandering, abusiveness and social impropriety, particularly in the more advanced stages of the disorder.

Study also revealed that major tranquilizers and behaviour management programs are used more frequently on male patients.