UCLA Health Makes Discovery on the Female Brain
January 25th, 2026 by Princy Shah
By 2050, 139 million people will be held captive by the commonly feared disease, Alzheimer's, and of those, nearly two-thirds will be women. Since 2019, UClA Health has dedicated extensive research to neurologic disorders that seem to affect women much more than men. These neurological disorders include sclerosis, brain fog during menopause, Alzheimer's, etc., all of which deal with cognitive decline.
The research connected that these problems are higher in women due to females' double X sex chromosomes. When zoomed into a singular X sex cell, researchers found, "a gene on the X chromosome that drives inflammation in brain immune cells, known as microglia"(Los Angeles Health Sciences), and since women have two of these, the female race is exposed to double the effects of the inflammation and aging. UCLA Health then knocked out the microgram gene Kdm6a, using metformin; a diabetes treatment, and found that the inflammation went back to a resting and stable state.
In 2026, this lab will continue this project to find if metformin can be a potential cure not just for these threatening neurological disorders, but for rapid aging as a whole. This study is a step forward that can heal dementia and lessen the destructive results of menopause in women. The gene Kdm6a continues to create further crises such as various cancers in women, and finding its molecular balance can mean saving the female race from unnecessary pain that the male bodies have not had to endure.
Posted in: Research