Confession: I named my parents' cat (who died recently) Watson after listening to Ira Flatow interview James Watson, PhD, while driving cross country with my dad in 2000. Both before and after the all-critical cat-name-inspiring program, Science Friday has been a part of my Friday as often as I can squeeze it in.
So I was happy to hear that today's program (which airs locally from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on KQED) will feature Stanford's Michael Greicius, MD, MPH. He'll be talking about Alzheimer's disease and why the disease affects men and women differently.
Greicius, medical director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders, has worked with the gene variant known as ApoE4 - the largest single genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's, particularly for women. Last spring, he published a study showing that healthy ApoE4-positive women were twice as likely to contract the disease as their ApoE4-negative counterparts.
Greicius is expected to be on in the second hour, from 12 to 1 p.m. Pacific time.
Previously: Blocking a receptor on brain's immune cells counters Alzheimer's in mice, Examining the potential of creating new synapses in old or damaged brains, The state of Alzheimer's research: A conversation with Stanford neurologist Michael Greicius and Having a copy of ApoE4 gene variant doubles Alzheimer's risk for women but not for men
Photo by *Ann Gordon
