Does obesity cause limbic neuroglia changes that may precede Alzheimer's disease? An MRI causal analysis investigation using quantitative magnetisation transfer

By a causal analysis approach, we investigated the effect that an “intervention” on healthy population weight would produce on hippocampus macromolecular exchange rates. The quantitative magnetisation transfer index forward exchange rate (k_f) is recognised to be lowered by myelin/axonal membrane loss and neuroinflammation. We found that, especially in over 56 years aged male subjects, forcing the weight to stay below the overweight threshold (waist-to-hip ratio 0.9) may dramatically reduce low macromolecular exchange rate occurrences in the population.