Chances are you weren’t worrying much about developing Alzheimer’s disease when you were in your teens, twenties, or thirties. However, the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease increases as women get older, and that risk is frequently pointed out around the menopausal years. Although there are several reasons suggested for this elevated risk, a recent study has focused on three of them: namely, cholesterol, triglycerides, and glucose levels, and perhaps at a younger age than you think.

Estrogen and Alzheimer’s disease  

One reason for introducing the topic of Alzheimer’s disease during perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause is the relationship between declining estrogen and the brain. Estrogen appears to play a role in protecting the brain from damage caused by Alzheimer’s and so the drop in estrogen levels in later life in women may leave the brain more vulnerable. 

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More specifically, declining estrogen levels are accompanied by a decrease in gray matter in important areas of the brain that are affected by Alzheimer’s disease. The importance of estrogen in memory decline was noted in a Weill Cornell Medicine study reported in 2021. In that report, women who had more exposure to estrogen (e.g., who took hormone therapy or hormonal contraceptives or who had a longer reproductive span) were found to have more gray matter in some of those brain areas. 

Cholesterol, Glucose and Alzheimer’s disease: Study

Now a recent study from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) reports that an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be detected at an earlier age using three different factors: high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, and glucose. 

The researchers found that individuals who had low HDL and high triglyceride levels at age 35 were at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life. They also discovered those study participants who had high blood glucose levels between the ages of 51 and 60 also showed a greater risk for this most common form of dementia. 

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These findings are significant because they confirm previous research linking glucose and cholesterol levels with a future risk of developing Alzheimer’s plus “we have shown for the first time that these associations extend much earlier in life than previously thought,” notes Lindsay A. Farrer, PhD, chief of biomedical genetics at BUSM and the study’s senior author. The data used in the study is from participants of the Framingham Heart Study who were examined about every four years throughout most of the adulthood, from 35 to 70 years. 

Bottom line

The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease does not begin in old age; it begins decades earlier. New research indicates that two cardiovascular risk factors—low HDL and high triglycerides as young as age 35--and high glucose between the ages 51 and 60 are associated with a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s later in life.