United States: A new study which is from Washington University School of Medicine shows that a certain type of fat which is called visceral fat, can hereby also help to predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in the life. This fat which is particularly found around the belly and is specifically linked to obesity, which is known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s for people between the ages of 40 and 60.
However, scientists are still figuring out exactly how this fat affects brain health.
To further examine this, Mahsa Dolatshahi, a post-doctoral research associate at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, and colleagues purchased differing types and locations of fat around the body as well as other metabolic factors in relation to amyloid brain levels.
As reported by the Insideprecisionmedicine, Healthy middle-aged people do not present symptoms of Alzheimer disease but amyloid present in the brain is a good predictor of who is most likely to develop the neurodegenerative disease in the later years.
The study conducted and reported at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America involved eighty midlife people who were not cognitively impaired at baseline. , the average age was 49 years; 63% of participants were female; and 58% were classified as overweight (BMI > 30 kg/m2).
Body fat distribution was estimated by MRI scan while whole-brain amyloid burden was estimated using PET scan.
In terms of amyloid burden measured with the centiloid scale, the participants with obesity had a higher score as compared to the participants without obesity. Centiloid scale score also correlated with the visceral adipose tissue which represents another component of body fat that is hormonally conversationally active body fat tissue located mostly in the abdominal area which is capable of influencing physiological activity of other organs or tissues through biochemical messengers.
To a lesser extent, B9 also showed significant associations between insulin resistance, BMI, and subcutaneous fat with higher amyloid levels, but no relations were seen for either liver fat or thigh fat.
The researchers said that they can account for approximately 77% of the BMI high or obesity on the results of the amyloid-related increase in visceral fat.
‘This final important finding was identified because Alzheimer’s disease was analyzed in terms of neuropathology already in midlife, at ages 40s and 50s that is when the disease pathology is completely initiated.
And the potential modifications like weight loss and reducing visceral fat are more effective as a means of preventing or delaying the onset of the disease said the study author Dolatshahi in a press statement.
