HHS HealthBeat (July 9, 2010)

Smaller brains

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

A study indicates that people who are big in the middle could have smaller brains – which can put them at higher risk of dementia as they age. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine saw this in data from a long-running study of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.

The scientists examined imaging data on the size of the brains of more than 700 people around 60 years of age. And they looked at measures of overweight and obesity, notably visceral fat, which is around organs.

Researcher Sudha Seshadri:

[Sudha Seshadri speaks] ``People who had excess fat around the viscera had smaller brains than others the same age without this excess fat.’’

The study in Annals of Neurology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011