New Study Links Body Fat in Midlife to Alzheimer’s Disease Symptoms

About 6.9 million Americans ages 65 and up live with Alzheimer’s disease, and the number is estimated to grow to 13 million by 2050. However, researchers from Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at WashU Medicine may have found new insights that could help combat the disease well before symptoms appear. A study from the research team `links a specific type of body fat to Alzheimer’s disease up to 20 years before the onset of dementia symptoms.

Authored by Mahsa Dolatshahi, MD, a postdoctoral research associate working in the Raji Brain Health Imaging Lab based in MIR’s Neuroimaging Labs Research Center, the study connects visceral body fat in midlife with abnormal proteins in the brain that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Visceral, or “hidden” fat, is also connected to reduced cerebral blood flow.

“This crucial result was discovered because we investigated Alzheimer’s disease pathology as early as midlife — in the 40s and 50s — when the disease pathology is at its earliest stages, and 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 Dolatshahi in a press release from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Cyrus A. Raji, MD, PhD, associate professor of radiology and the lab’s principal investigator, says this discovery “opens up the possibility that treatment with lifestyle modifications or appropriate weight-loss drugs could…potentially lower the burden of and reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dolatshahi received the Trainee Research Prize and her study was featured during the 110th RSNA Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting in Chicago.