Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the relationship of fat mass (FM) with brain amyloid (Aβ) load in older adults.
Methods: Data from the Multidomain Alzheimer's Preventive Trial (MAPT) for Positron emission tomography and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) were used. Linear regressions controlling for appendicular muscle, age, education, clinical dementia rating scale and Apolipoprotein-E were performed to explore the relationships between FM, trunk FM and Aβ-load.
Results: Thirty-nine participants (75.7 ± 4.2 years old) with an average BMI of 27.5 ± 4.0 kg/m2 were analyzed in this study. There were significant and positive associations of both total and trunk FM with Aβ load [0.01 (0.002-0.02) and 0.02 (0.001-0.04), respectively]; however, when adding ApoE-ε4 as a confounder, associations were no longer significant.
Conclusions: This study has found associations between FM as measured by DXA and cerebral Aβ load, suggesting that excessive FM might be involved in AD pathology.
Keywords: Obesity; amyloid; brain; fat mass.