Identifying obesity and dementia risk: body adiposity and neural connectivity in cognitively normal, mid-life adults

Obesity is a risk factor for dementia, creating a chronic inflammatory state that results in white matter (WM) injury. Edge density imaging (EDI) is a novel technique that has demonstrated reliability in quantifying WM changes. Thirty obese and 20 non-obese cognitively normal adults underwent structural and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) were quantified via VOXel Analysis Suite by separating signal intensities of adipose and non-adipose tissue. Scans were processed by a pipeline (MaPPeRTrac) to generate EDI. Among obese participants, there was a negative association between the VAT/SAT ratio and EDI, which was not seen among non-obese participants. Additionally, males had decreased EDI compared to females. The results of this study suggest that obesity, through WM damage, may confer increased risk of dementia, with sex as a potential differential factor. EDI demonstrates promise in delineating the neuropathology of obesity and dementia.