Research that will be presented at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual conference next week suggests that higher levels of visceral belly fat in midlife are linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds the internal organs, which are found deep within the abdomen. Researchers have discovered a connection between this hidden belly fat and brain changes that may manifest up to 15 years before the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, like memory loss. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that over 6 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, this number is predicted to rise to about 13 million. One in five women and one in ten men will at some point in their lives suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
To try and identify Alzheimer’s risks earlier, researchers assessed the association between brain MRI volumes, as well as amyloid and tau uptake on positron emission tomography (PET) scans, with body mass index (BMI), obesity, insulin resistance and abdominal adipose (fatty) tissue in a cognitively normal midlife population. Amyloid and tau are proteins thought to interfere with the communication between brain cells.
“Even though there have been other studies linking BMI with brain atrophy or even a higher dementia risk, no prior study has linked a specific type of fat to the actual Alzheimer’s disease protein in cognitively normal people,” said study author Mahsa Dolatshahi, M.D., M.P.H., post-doctoral research fellow with Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.