Study reveals association between BMI, risk of dementia

By 2050, there are projected to be more than 150 million instances of dementia worldwide, a sharp increase from the 50 million cases that exist today.A global epidemic of obesity, generally measured by body mass index (BMI), persists, and past research revealed that obesity in middle age may raise the risk of dementia.The link between BMI and the risk of dementia, however, is still not obvious. These findings appear online in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.Now, researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, have found that different patterns of BMI changes over one’s life course may be an indicator of a person’s risk for dementia.”These findings are important because previous studies that looked at weight trajectories didn’t consider how patterns of weight gain/stability/loss might help signal that dementia is potentially imminent,” explained corresponding author Rhoda Au, PhD, professor of anatomy and neurobiology.