Are Women at Higher Risk for Dementia?       

                                                                                       

FACT: Almost two-thirds of people in the US with Alzheimer's disease are women.
FACT: At age 65, women have a 1:6 chance of developing the disease compared to men, where the chance is 1:11. 


Is it because women tend to live longer than men?  Genetics? Hormones? Cardiovascular health?


While it's true that women outlive men by an average of 5 years, we know that Alzheimer's actually begins long before the diagnosis is made - perhaps as long as 20 years.  And the pace of the disease appears to be faster in women.


It turns out that women who carry an ApoE-4 variant are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's compared to women without the gene.  Whether other factors/co-factors are at play and whether the approach to diagnosis, treatment and prevention should be different in women vs. men remains to be seen.




                                                                                                                        Judith Wolf, MD
                                                                                                                        Associate Director, WHEP

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I am an avid fan of the widely popular Netflix show, Orange is the New Black. I’ve been raving about the show since its first season in 2013, and ever since the conclusion of season two last July, I had been counting the days to the June 12th release of season three. It is not a show that you can just watch one episode at a time- I, along with many others, am a binge watcher. My husband and I watched both seasons one and two in two days. The show is based on its main character, Piper Chapman, played by Taylor Schilling. Chapman (inmates are called my their last names) is sentenced to 15 months in Litchfield Penitentiary, a federal prison in Upstate New York, for a crime (smuggling drug money into another country) she’d committed a decade earlier. It follows Piper’s experience from when she turns herself in to the present. The enthralling part of the show is how it follows several inmates’ lives, explaining what led to the “big house.” Orange is the New Black has plenty of comedy, plenty of drama, and even more OMG moments. In addition, it touches on several Women’s Health Issues that make me curious about the correlation between the show and the lives of real-life female prisoners.  

One of the earliest female health issues came about when inmate Sophia Burset, a transsexual convict, played by Laverne Cox, had to deal with a sudden change the dosage of her hormones due to prison budget cuts. Burset was forced to figure out how to get what she needed to sustain, from trying to persuade older inmates to give her their hormones, to trying to get her wife to smuggle them in during their visits. Eventually, the prison went back to its regular practices, and Burset began to receive again what she needed. If this were to happen in reality, what options would an inmate have?

Inmate Dayanara “Daya” Diaz, played by Dascha Polanco, gets pregnant while incarcerated through a relationship she developed with one of the correctional officers. It’s truly an untraditional love story but sadly, Daya cannot report that she’s pregnant because if anyone finds out, her lover will lose his job and be labeled as a sex offender. While her prison friends and family (her mom is also an inmate) know about the soon coming baby, she is unable to get prenatal care because she cannot admit to the pregnancy.

Inmate Rosa Cisneros, played by Barbara Rosenblat, suffers from cancer. While the type of cancer she has is never stated, Rosa is often transported to chemotherapy visits. Her story line isn’t widely discussed, but often times, inmates complain of mold and other terrible conditions that fester in the prison. It leads you to wonder how she survives in such conditions, when her immune system is so weak.

While Orange is the New Black is a fictional show, it leads me to question the degree to which real-life inmates face similar challenges. As future practitioners of Women’s Health, how can you be leaders of change in the health of incarcerated women?

By Angela Woods

A Mother's Day Tradition in Philadelphia

Mother's Day typically means phone calls, flowers, visits and gifts.  In Philadelphia, it also means the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure - an education and fundraising event that raises awareness and support for the breast cancer movement.

You've probably heard the statistics about breast cancer in the United States: 

- More than 200,000 cases diagnosed and more than 40,000 deaths each year
- More than three million survivors
- One in eight women will be diagnosed in her lifetime 
- Less than 15% of women who get breast cancer have a family member who has been diagnosed with it


But were you aware that women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds have differing levels of risk? 


For example:

• Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and most common cause of cancer death among Hispanic women in the US.
• Although White women have a higher incidence of breast cancer than African-Americans, African-American women have a 44 percent higher mortality rate, irrespective of the age at diagnosis.
• About 15-20% of all breast cancers in the US are "triple negative" breast cancers (i.e. they lack the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and HER-2/neu).  Triple negative breast cancer occurs more often in younger women, African American women, and women with BRCA1 gene mutations.  It tends to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer and is more lethal in African American women than White women. 

Learn more...
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/breast
http://www.cancer.org/research/cancerfactsstatistics/breast-cancer-facts-figures
http://ww5.komen.org/
http://komenphiladelphia.org/race/




                                                                       Judith E. Wolf, MD
                                                                       Associate Director, WHEP