Shocking Discovery: Obesity Causes Neurodegeneration Similar to Alzheimer's Disease - SciTechDaily

A correlation between neurodegeneration in obese people and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients has been found in a new study led by scientists at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University.

This suggests that losing excess weight could slow cognitive decline in aging and lower risk for AD.

Previous research has shown that obesity is linked with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related changes, such as cerebrovascular damage and amyloid-ß accumulation.

“Our study strengthens previous literature pointing to obesity as a significant factor in AD by showing that cortical thinning might be one of the potential risk mechanisms.” — Filip Morys

They compared the AD patients with healthy controls, and obese with non-obese individuals, creating maps of grey matter atrophy for each group.

The scientists found that obesity and AD affected grey matter cortical thinning in similar ways.