Is there any bodily function obesity can’t screw up? Researchers recently took a deep dive into the statistics to see how extreme overweight influences the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. And they got a loud, alarming message…
Researchers at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at Washington University School of Med-icine in St. Louis had the idea to try a sort of ‘bank-shot’ (billiards term) investigation of possible connections between obesity and Alzheimer’s Disease…
What they did
To explore this connection, the team drew on five years of data from 407 volunteers enrolled in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, which provided both amyloid positron emission tomo-graphy (PET) scans and blood samples. PET scans are used to show the brain’s amyloid burden, the buildup of beta-amyloid protein in the brain as amyloid plaques, a central feature of Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers analyzed plasma samples for several blood biomarkers (BBMs) related to Alzheimer’s disease.
Then they used statistical methods to examine how these BBMs related to body mass index (BMI) and to evaluate a three-way interaction between baseline obesity, time and BBMs.
What they found
When the team combined the blood and imaging data, they found that at the start of the study, higher BMI was linked to lower BBM levels and a lower overall amyloid burden across the brain.
As the years passed, both Alzheimer’s disease BBMs and brain PET scans showed a greater build-up of Alzheimer’s-related pathology in participants with obesity compared with those without obesity. People with obesity experienced a 29 percent to 95 percent faster increase in plasma BBM levels. Having obesity at the outset was also associated with a 24 percent faster rise in plasma BBMs and a 3.7 percent faster increase in amyloid accumulation.
The takeaway
“This is such profound science to follow right now because we have drugs that can treat obesity quite powerfully. Which means we could track the effect of weight loss drugs on Alzheimer’s biomarkers in future studies,” team leader Dr. Cyrus Raji said. “It’s marvelous that we have these blood biomarkers to track the molecular pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, and MRI scans to track additional evidence of brain degeneration and response to various treatments. This work is foundational for future studies and treatment trials.”
My take
Given the alarming connection demonstrated by the Washington University study, more and deeper research into the effects of obesity on Alzheimer’s progression are inevitable.
And given the Obesity Crisis currently facing the Western World, we need that research now!
~ Maggie J.