Obesity can cause changes in the brain similar to Alzheimer's, study suggests
Being overweight in midlife has been linked to greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, and a new study shows that brain changes in obese people mirror some of those with Alzheimer’s.
Being overweight in midlife has been linked to greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, and a new study shows that brain changes in obese people mirror some of those with Alzheimer’s.
Scientists at McGill University in Montreal analyzed brain scans of more than 1,300 people in the first research to directly compare the patterns of brain shrinkage in obese people and in Alzheimer’s patients.
The scans revealed similar brain thinning in regions involved in learning, memory and judgment in both groups, according to the report published Tuesday in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Obesity can cause changes in the body that are associated with raising the risk of Alzheimer’s, including damage to the brain’s blood vessels and the accumulation of abnormal proteins, earlier studies have found. The new research takes it a step further.
“We showed that there is a similarity between the brains of people who are obese and those with Alzheimer’s,” said the study’s first author, Filip Morys, a postdoctoral neuroscience researcher at McGill University. “And it boils down to the thickness of the cerebral cortex.”
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