Recent study has found that more women than men are becoming victims of the Alzheimer’s disease; they account for almost two-thirds of those diagnosed with the disease. About 60 per cent of the unpaid caregivers are women. Scientists and sociologists are picturing it as a women’s disease.

Dr. Ted Rothstein, a neurologist at George Washington University Medical Center, notes that women tend to have shorter lifespans and are more prone to the disease.

The disease is turning into an epidemic in the U.S.; Americans might spend $20 billion over the next forty years.
A new case of dementia is diagnosed in some part of the world, every seven seconds. The Alzheimer’s Foundation is now studying how Alzheimer’s could triple in the next 40 years.

Maria Shriver, California's First Lady, whose dad was diagnosed with the disease in the year 2003, recently came up with The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's.

In that, she says "Sixty percent of the people who get it are women. They're also doing the caretaking. And millions of these women are also working full-time."

Dr. Rothstein noted that "When you reach the 75 to 85 age group, there are many more women out there than men, and the prevalence of the disease becomes more likely in women simply because there are more women around who are still living in their 80s and 85s."

Making a comparative analysis on money spent curing serious illnesses, Maria Shriver said "Heart disease and cancer get $6 billion, $5 billion, and Alzheimer's gets $500 million."

Dr. Rothstein feels deeper studies must be undertaken to analyze one of two proteins, tau and amyloids, that accumulate in the brains of those with Alzheimer's.

"It's only recently that people have been focusing on tau as the source for Alzheimer's disease so maybe the buildup of amyloids in the brain is secondary to the accumulation of these tau proteins," he said. "So we may have been barking up the wrong tree and maybe the big pharmaceutical companies have been following the wrong clue."

At the moment there is no cure for Alzheimer’s; patients can only be treated to a certain extent and provided hospice care if needed.

Studies predict that cases of Alzheimer’s are set to rise and are expected to affect 80 million by 2040, all over the world, and about sixty per cent of this might be in developing countries. A huge number of these might be women.