Being overweight might be negatively affecting your brainpower

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-02-02 03:00

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Being overweight might be impacting our brainpower, after Canadian and Polish researchers found an association between fat in our midsection and reduced scores on a cognitive test - a means of measuring our mental faculties. The team measured over 9,000 participants' body fat percentages, and compared the results to their cognitive function scores, making sure to adjust their results for heart disease risks or those who've had a brain injury. The researchers believe their test is a good sign that we should be working on strategies for preventing or reducing body fat as a means of preserving our brain function as we age.

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conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Funder: The CAHHM was funded by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Financial contributions were also received from the Population Health Research Institute and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Foundation grants FDN-143255 (Dr Anand), FDN-143313 (Jack V. Tu,MD, PhD, MSc, a previous co–principal investigator who has since died), and FDN-154317 (Dr Smith). In-kind contributionswere made by Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, for magnetic resonance imaging reading costs and Bayer AG for provision of intravenous contrast. The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health is funded by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, Genome Quebec, Genome Canada, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Government of Alberta, and Alberta Cancer Foundation. The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study was funded by multiple sources. The Montreal Heart Institute Biobank is funded by André Desmarais and France Chrétien-Desmarais and the Montreal Heart Institute Foundation. Some of the data used in this research were made available by the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health along with the BC Generations Project, Alberta’s Tomorrow Project, Ontario Health Study, CARTaGENE, and the Atlantic Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health. Data were harmonized by Maelstrom Research and access policies and procedureswere developed by the Centre of Genomics and Policy in collaboration with the cohorts. Dr. Anand holds the Heart and Stroke Foundation Michael G DeGroote Chair in Population Health and a Canada Research Chair in Ethnic Diversity and Cardiovascular Disease. PURE-Mind Funding: The PURE study is an investigator-initiated study that was funded by the Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences Research Institute, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, support from Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Strategy for Patient Oriented Research, through the Ontario SPOR Support Unit, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and through unrestricted grants from several pharmaceutical companies (with major contributions from AstraZeneca [Canada], Sanofi-Aventis [France and Canada], Boehringer Ingelheim [Germany and Canada], Servier, and GlaxoSmithKline) and additional contributions from Novartis and King Pharma and from various national or local organizations in participating countries. In Canada, there was additional support for the PURE study from an unrestricted grant from Dairy Farmers of Canada and the National Dairy Council (US), Public Health Agency of Canada, and Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network. The PURE Poland substudy was partially funded by grant 290/WPURE/ 2008/0 from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and the MRI substudy was supported by grant NCN 2015/17/B/NZ7-02963 from the Polish National Science Centre.

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