Obesity increases risk of dementia by 80%

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Save & Share Article

What’s this?

Digg	My Yahoo	Fark
del.icio.us	Newsvine	Reddit

Rate This Article

Rating:  0

Friday , May 09, 2008 at 2334 hrs Obesity can raise the risk of Alzheimer's disease by almost 80%, researchers in the United States have claimed.

A team at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has carried out a review of ten studies, involving over 37,000 people, and found a close link between the two diseases — obesity and dementia.

The review suggests that obesity increases the risk of dementia in general by 42%, Alzheimer’s by 80% and vascular dementia by 73%, the Obesity Reviews journal reported. According to the study’s senior author Youfa Wang, “Our analysis of the data shows a clear association between obesity and an increased risk for dementia and several clinical subtypes of the disease. Subjects with a healthy body mass index and waist circumference saw a decreased risk for dementia than their counterparts with an elevated BMI or waist circumference.”

Preventing or treating obesity at a younger age could play a major role in reducing the number of dementia patients and those with other commonly associated illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease by up to 20%. Lead researcher M A Beydoun, along with Wang and H A Beydoun attribute these findings to a systematic review of the ten studies over the past two decades.

Based on a pooled analysis of their findings from seven of the studies, baseline obesity compared to normal weight increased the risk of Alzheimer's disease by 80% on an average. The team further concluded that being underweight also increases the risk of dementia and its subtypes. The studies cited were conducted in a number of countries, including the US, Finland, Sweden and France, and contained middle-aged and older adults.

“While more studies are needed to determine optimal weight and biological mechanisms associated with obesity and dementia, these findings could potentially decrease the number of people diagnosed with dementia and lead to an overall better quality of life,” the ScienceDaily quoted M A Beydoun as saying.