A new study suggests that a promising blood test for Alzheimer’s disease may need to be interpreted differently depending on whether the patient is male or female. The researchers found that for the same concentration of a specific protein in the blood, men exhibited more severe brain damage and cognitive decline than women. These findings were published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease has historically been a difficult and expensive process. Physicians currently rely on a combination of subjective memory tests and invasive or costly biological measures. The most accurate biological tools available today involve positron emission tomography, known as PET scans, or lumbar punctures to analyze cerebrospinal fluid. PET scans use radioactive tracers to visualize plaques and tangles in the brain, while lumbar punctures require inserting a needle into the lower back to collect fluid for analysis. Because these methods are not easily scalable for routine screening, the medical community has sought a blood-based biomarker that could indicate the presence and severity of neurodegeneration without the need for specialized equipment or invasive …