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Association of body mass index, and waist to hip ratio with brain structure

journal contribution
posted on 2018-10-12, 14:05 authored by Mark Hamer, G. David Batty
Objective: We examined the association of body mass index (BMI) and waist to hip ratio (WHR) with brain volume. Methods: We used cross-sectional data from UK Biobank study (n=9,652 ; aged 55.4±7.5 yrs; 47.9% men). Measures included BMI, WHR, and total fat mass as ascertained from bioimpedance. Brain images were produced using structural magnetic resonance imaging. Results: After adjustment for a range of covariates, higher levels of all obesity measures were related to lower grey matter volume: BMI per SD (beta coefficient=-4113; 95% confidence interval: -4862, -3364), WHR (-4272; -5280, -3264), fat mass (-4590; -5386, -3793). The combination of overall obesity (BMI≥30 kg/m2 ) and central obesity (WHR>0.85 women; >0.90 men) was associated with the lowest grey matter compared with lean adults. In hypothesis-free testing with a Bonferroni correction, obesity was also related to various regional brain volumes including Caudate, Putamen, Pallidum, and Nucelus Accumbens. No associations between obesity and white matter were apparent. Conclusion: The combination of heightened BMI and WHR may be an important risk factor for grey matter atrophy.

Funding

This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under Application Number 23476. MH acknowledges support from the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre. GDB is supported by the UK Medical Research Council (MR/P023444/1) and the US National Institute on Aging (1R56AG052519-01; 1R01AG052519-01A1).

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Neurology

Citation

HAMER, M. and BATTY, G.D., 2018. Association of body mass index, and waist to hip ratio with brain structure. Neurology, 92 (6), e594-600.

Publisher

© American Academy of Neurology

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-10-03

Publication date

2018

Notes

This paper is closed access.

ISSN

0028-3878

eISSN

1526-632X

Language

  • en

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