White matter microstructural variability mediates the relation between obesity and cognition in healthy adults

Zhang, Rui; Beyer, Frauke; Lampe, Leonie; Luck, Tobias; Riedel‐Heller, Steffi G.; Loeffler, Markus; Schroeter, Matthias L.; Stümvoll, Michael; Villringer, Arno; Witte, A. Veronica

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.01.028

Cited by 73 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 86 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Zhang et al recently reported the results of a statistical mediation analysis looking at obesity, white matter, and cognition links in a large sample of 1255 adults from the Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases (LIFE-Adult) cohort. 54 Consistent with the general pattern of associations reported in Table 1, they observed a distributed negative correlation between measures of obesity (BMI and waist-to-hip ratio) and FA in association with white matter pathways (i.e., fascicles that connect association areas of cortex), including the superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiations, and corpus callosum. FA in these same pathways was positively associated with neuropsychological measures of executive function and processing speed.…”

Section: Associations Between Peripheral Health and White Mattersupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Most studies in the literature use cross-sectional analysis and observe a distributed negative link between obesity and FA throughout the brain. [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] For example, work by our group found that 24 of the 27 white matter regions of interest tested were significantly associated with BMI, such that individuals with higher BMI had lower FA. 40 In some cases, the association between obesity and lower FA coincides with a trend for lower AD and higher RD as well.…”

Section: Associations Between Peripheral Health and White Mattermentioning

confidence: 91%

See 1 more Smart Citation

White matter pathways as both a target and mediator of health behaviors

Porter

Leckie

Verstynen

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Health behaviors arise from the dynamics of highly interconnected networks in the brain and variability in these networks drives individual differences in behavior. In this review, we show how many factors that predict the physical health of the body also correlate with variability of the myelinated fascicles, called white matter, that connect brain regions together. The general pattern present in the literature is that as predictors of physical health decline, there is often a coincident reduction in the integrity of major white matter pathways. We also highlight a plausible mechanism, inflammatory pathways, whereby health-related activation of the immune system can impact the myelin sheath, a protective tissue that facilitates long range communication in the brain. The growing body of evidence supports the hypothesis that degrading health in the periphery may disrupt the communication efficiency of the macroscopic neural circuits that mediate complex behaviors, which can in turn contribute to poorer physical health.

show abstract

Section: Associations Between Peripheral Health and White Mattersupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Associations Between Peripheral Health and White Mattermentioning

confidence: 91%

White matter pathways as both a target and mediator of health behaviors

Porter

Leckie

Verstynen

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…47 In this scenario, a visceral obesityrelated boost of inflammatory activity might be especially harmful. 48 Obesity-related structural differences suggestive of demyelination and increased water content in the white matter were reported even in small sample sizes (n = 48) by means of quantitative multiparametric mapping. Independent of exact pathomechanisms, there is mounting evidence for obesity-related structural changes in the white matter.…”

Section: Underlying Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…18 Considering white matter microstructure, we recently showed that lower fractional anisotropy, as a measure of directed diffusion, was related to visceral obesity in multiple white matter tracts throughout the brain using diffusion-weighted imaging. 48 Obesity-related structural differences suggestive of demyelination and increased water content in the white matter were reported even in small sample sizes (n = 48) by means of quantitative multiparametric mapping. 49,50 The current study adds to these findings and implicates that visceral obesity might not only exert subtle effects on overall white matter microstructure, but also particularly induce manifest white matter lesions in the deep white matter.…”

Section: Underlying Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Visceral obesity relates to deep white matter hyperintensities via inflammation

Lampe

Zhang

Beyer

et al. 2019

Annals of Neurology

Self Cite

136

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are linked to vascular risk factors and increase the risk of cognitive decline, dementia, and stroke. We here aimed to determine whether obesity contributes to regional WMHs using a whole‐brain approach in a well‐characterized population‐based cohort. Methods Waist‐to‐hip ratio (WHR), body mass index (BMI), systolic/diastolic blood pressure, hypertension, diabetes and smoking status, blood glucose and inflammatory markers, as well as distribution of WMH were assessed in 1,825 participants of the LIFE‐adult study (age, 20–82 years; BMI, 18.4–55.4 kg/m 2 ) using high‐resolution 3‐Tesla magnetic resonance imaging. Voxel‐wise analyses tested if obesity predicts regional probability of WMH. Additionally, mediation effects of high‐sensitive C‐reactive protein and interleukin‐6 (IL6) measured in blood were related to obesity and WMH using linear regression and structural equation models. Results WHR related to higher WMH probability predominantly in the deep white matter, even after adjusting for effects of age, sex, and systolic blood pressure (mean ß = 0.0043 [0.0008 SE], 95% confidence interval, [0.00427, 0.0043]; threshold‐free cluster enhancement, family‐wise error‐corrected p < 0.05). Conversely, higher systolic blood pressure was associated with WMH in periventricular white matter regions. Mediation analyses indicated that both higher WHR and higher BMI contributed to increased deep‐to‐periventricular WMH ratio through elevated IL6. Interpretation Our results indicate an increased WMH burden selectively in the deep white matter in obese subjects with high visceral fat accumulation, independent of common obesity comorbidities such as hypertension. Mediation analyses proposed that visceral obesity contributes to deep white matter lesions through increases in proinflammatory cytokines, suggesting a pathomechanistic link. Longitudinal studies need to confirm this hypothesis. ANN NEUROL 2019;85:194–203.

show abstract

“…While our estimate of a weight loss-induced bias in neuroimaging outcomes (i.e., 5% increase in total grey matter volume after bariatric surgery) relied on between-subject estimates of the effect of head motion (Alexander-Bloch et al, 2016) and therefore has to be interpreted with caution, its severity further underscores the importance to control for head motion differences in future MRI analyses. Different techniques, such as multi-echo sequences (Power et al, 2018), fixation through head molds (Power et al, 2019b) and tactile feedback during scanning (Krause et al, 2019) have been proposed to considerably reduce head motion a priori -which is probably the best way to handle this important confound for practically all imaging outcomes (Reuter et al, 2015;Beyer et al, 2017;Baum et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weight loss reduces head motion: re-visiting a major confound in neuroimaging

Beyer

Prehn

Wuesten

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Head motion during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) induces image artifacts that affect virtually every brain measure. In parallel, cross-sectional observations indicate a correlation of head motion with age, psychiatric disease status and obesity, raising the possibility of a systematic artifact-induced bias in neuroimaging outcomes in these conditions, due to the differences in head motion. Yet, a causal link between obesity and head motion has not been tested in an experimental design. Here, we show that a change in body mass index (i.e., weight loss after bariatric surgery) systematically decreases head motion during MRI. In this setting, reduced imaging artifacts due to lower head motion might result in biased estimates of neural differences induced by changes in BMI. Overall, our finding urges the need to rigorously control for within-scanner head motion to enable valid results of neuroimaging outcomes in populations that differ in head motion due to obesity or other conditions.

show abstract

White matter microstructural variability mediates the relation between obesity and cognition in healthy adults

Cited by 73 publications

References 86 publications

White matter pathways as both a target and mediator of health behaviors

White matter pathways as both a target and mediator of health behaviors

Visceral obesity relates to deep white matter hyperintensities via inflammation

Weight loss reduces head motion: re-visiting a major confound in neuroimaging

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About