Being Overweight At Midlife May Increase Risk For Developing Dementia Later

Reuters (5/2, Pittman) reported that being overweight or obese during middle age increases the risk for dementia even after factoring for diabetes and vascular disease histories, according to study in the journal Neurology, which followed that followed twins in Sweden for 30 years.

HealthDay (5/2, Doheny) reported that the researchers analyzed data twins of whom “50 were diagnosed with dementia” and 114 had “possible dementia.” They found that about “26 percent of participants without dementia had been overweight at midlife, compared to 36 percent of those with possible dementia and 39 percent with diagnosed dementia.” And although “2.7 percent of seniors without dementia had been obese at midlife, 6.9 percent of those with dementia had been obese, as well as 5.3 percent of those with possible dementia.” Notably, when they looked at twin pairs in which “one had dementia in later life and one did not,” the link to weight was “no longer significant, suggesting early environment and genetics also play roles in dementia.”

The UK’s Daily Mail (5/2, Hope), BBC News (5/4, Gallagher), and WebMD (5/2, Nierenberg) also covered the study.