During the menopause transition, only 1 in 5 women have optimal scores using the American Heart Association’s health-assessment tool, known as Life’s Essential 8 (LE8). Among the tool’s eight components, four of them — blood glucose, blood pressure, sleep quality and nicotine use — are key in driving future cardiovascular risks, with sleep being particularly crucial for long-term cardiovascular health.

It’s been recognized for some time that Alzheimer’s disease affects brain regions differently and that tau — a protein known to misbehave — plays an important role in the disease. Brain areas like the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus succumb early to tau tangles, while other areas, like the primary sensory cortices, remain resilient to the disease. In the quest to better understand this selective vulnerability (SV) or resilience (SR) to Alzheimer’s disease, researchers have looked to gene association and transgenic studies to identify Alzheimer’s risk genes. But past research has not shown a clear link between the location of genetic risk factors and associated tau pathology. Now, a new study by UC San Francisco researchers has made a leap toward answering that question — by combining brain imaging, genetics, and advanced mathematical modeling into a powerful new lens. The study, published July 9 in Brain, shows multiple distinct pathways by which risk genes confer vulnerability or resilience in Alzheimer’s disease.