Women with an abnormal number of a certain hormone are more likely to develop dementia, as suggested by latest study conducted in cooperation with the Framingham Heart Study (FHS).

Participants from the Boston University cardiovascular research initiatives provided frozen blood samples that allowed scientists to isolate a hormone known as adiponectin, which the new research findings said appear to be connected with dementia.

According to a report by U.S. network ABC, the study drew its conclusion on the analysis of 840 participants, which were monitored for 13 years, with 159 of them suffering brain degeneration with one common denominator - high presence of adiponectin.

The results, according to Dr Ernst Schaefer of Tufts University, were somewhat perplexing as the pursued links between dementia and diabetes were further complicated by what the researchers have so far appreciated from the decade-old study.

While science generally regards adiponectin as an important agent in preventing the onset of diabetes, its purportedly dementia-inducing function, at least in the context of the FHS experiment, had caught the researchers by surprise.

"Adiponectin is supposed to be beneficial. It's supposed to decrease your risk of diabetes, supposed to decrease the risk of heart disease. But in this particular study, to our surprise, it increased the risk of dementia," Schaefer, the study's lead author, was quoted by ABC as saying in the report.

Adiponectin, Schaefer added, actually aids insulin to properly perform its main function, and that is to fuel numerous body activities, including the complex neurological functions of the human brain.

He also pointed out that while his group's research findings pinpointed the likely role of adiponectin in the development of dementia for women, the same is not true for male patients involved in the FHS study.

Schaefer said that high traces of the hormone were also seen on men who developed dementia but their minimal numbers were insufficient to scientifically connect adiponectin to male dementia.

More studies will have to be conducted on that respect, the scientist conceded.

Schaefer's research was following through earlier studies that probed the possible links of diabetes and obesity to dementia, ABC said.

Some experts were trying to fully understand the specific role of insulin on mental degenerations while working on suggestions that somehow blames obesity as precursor to dementia on the account that most overweight people eventually develop type 2 diabetes.

Schaefer's findings may have not provided the definitive answers for the current mysteries surrounding the three conditions but Dr. Roger Brumback of Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha believes the study could spur further efforts to shed light on any questions about dementia.

"This study just reinforces our need for much more research on the relationship of insulin signalling to brain function and then its relationship to dementing illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease," Brumback was quoted by ABC as saying.