Researchers in Shanghai have found that although women live longer than men, their brains age faster, local media reported Thursday.

A team of scientists from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences determined that women's cognitive abilities decline faster than men's as the former grow older, according to a report in the Oriental Morning Post. They also found that women suffer Alzheimer's disease at a higher rate. Their findings were published in the journal Aging Cell in August.

A team of Chinese and international scientists spent nearly three years comparing 55 male and female brains of different age groups and more than 13,000 genes in four brain regions.

They found that 98 percent of 667 genes in the brain's frontal lobe age faster in women than in men.

The discovery might show that higher stress plays a part in causing women's brains to age faster, said Yuan Yuan, a computational biologist from the research team. (Global Times)