A study reveals that the level of fat in the muscles of the body may indicate a person’s likelihood of experiencing cognitive decline as they age.
- The fat content of muscles could predict a risk of cognitive decline.
- Cognitive decline is one of the effects of brain aging or certain diseases.
- Reducing fat in the body is a line of research considered by researchers to reduce the risk of dementia.
Fat, a risk factor for cognitive decline? Yes, if we are to believe the result of a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Fat in the thigh alters cognitive abilities
Cognitive decline is defined by the decline in sensory and intellectual faculties due to age or illness.
According to the researchers, the specific increase over five years in the fat stored in the thigh muscle (called muscle adiposity) could lead to an impairment of one or more cognitive functions.
This risk was independent of overall weight, other fat deposits, and muscle characteristics (such as strength or muscle mass), as well as other traditional dementia risk factors like genetics.
Link between fat level and cognitive decline: more than 1,600 adults followed
To arrive at this result, the researchers evaluated muscle fat in 1,634 adults (including 48% women) aged 69 to 79, the first and sixth years of follow-up. They also analyzed their cognitive functions in the first, third, fifth, eighth and tenth year of the experiment.
According to their findings, increased muscle adiposity between grades one and six was associated with faster and greater cognitive decline over time.
“Our data suggest that muscle adiposity plays a unique role in cognitive decline, distinct from that of other types of fat or other muscle characteristics.“, said one of the study’s authors, Caterina Rosano, from the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, in the United States.
A link between obesity and dementia already known
This is not the first time that the link between adiposity and dementia has been studied.
Canadian researchers had already shown that obesity, the excessive accumulation of fat in the body, can lead to the accumulation of amyloid β plaques in the brain, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia.
The next step for researchers will be to understand how muscle fat and the brain”dialogue”and whether reducing muscle adiposity may also reduce the risk of dementia.
