Metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes appear to share risk factors with and may influence the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, according to several reports published in the March 2009 issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Women with the cluster of cardiovascular risk factors known collectively as the metabolic syndrome appear likely to develop cognitive impairment over a four-year period. Kristine Yaffe, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues assessed 4,895 older women (average age 66.2) who did not have cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study.
Of the 497 (10.2 percent) women who had the metabolic syndrome 7.2 percent (36) developed cognitive impairment during a four-year period, compared with 4.1 percent (181 of 4,398) of those who did not have the metabolic syndrome. Each additional component of the syndrome — such as abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and low HDL cholesterol levels — was associated with a 23 percent increase in risk of cognitive impairment.
“As the obesity and sedentary lifestyle epidemic escalates throughout the world, identification of the role of these modifiable behaviors in increasing risk for development of deleterious outcomes, such as cognitive impairment, is critical,” the authors conclude.
“Future research should assess whether identification of cognitive impairment among patients with the metabolic syndrome or more aggressive clinical control of the factors that compose the metabolic syndrome might lessen the risk of developing cognitive impairment in elderly people,” the authors added.
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/Health — Heart Health/metabolic-neurological-disorders-may-be-linked/2009-03-10.1501
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