Women may remember words more than men during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A latest study suggested that this could delay diagnosis and treatment among women who have same levels of shrinkage in brain areas related to the debilitating disease.

The areas demonstrate the earliest proof of the most common kind of dementia. In the United States, Alzheimer's disease is the 6th main cause of death in people, and an estimated two-thirds of people who contract AD are women.

Dr. Erin E. Sundermann from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said, “One way to interpret the results is that because women have better verbal memory skills than men throughout life, women have a buffer of protection against loss of verbal memory before the effects of Alzheimer's disease kick in”.

In the study published in the journal Neurology of the American Academy of Neurology, researchers included the participants who belonged to the Alzheimer's disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Among the recruited ones, a total of 235 people suffer from AD, 694 have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment such as memory issues, and 379 people, who don’t suffer from any kind of thinking or memory problems.

The researchers measured both verbal memory and the size of the hippocampal area of the brain. This part of the brain manages verbal memory and the disease has its effect on this part. The team compared the two factors and discovered that women performed better in comparison to men in the tests.

This indicated that both men and women suffer minimal to moderate hippocampus shrinkage. However, in the later stage of the disease, where the shrinkage lever was very high, no difference was noted in the scores of all participants, no matter man or woman.