Abstract
Abdominal obesity is important for understanding obesity, which is a worldwide medical problem. We explored structural and functional brain differences in people with abdominal and non-abdominal obesity by using multimodal neuroimaging and up-to-date analysis methods. A total of 274 overweight people, whose body mass index exceeded 25, were enrolled in this study. Participants were divided into abdominal and non-abdominal obesity groups using a waist–hip ratio threshold of 0.9 for males and 0.85 for females. Structural and functional brain differences were assessed with diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Centrality measures were computed from structural fiber tractography, and static and dynamic functional connectivity matrices. Significant inter-group differences in structural and functional connectivity were found using degree centrality (DC) values. The associations between the DC values of the identified regions/networks and behaviors of eating disorder scores were explored. The highest association was achieved by combining DC values of the cerebral peduncle, anterior corona radiata, posterior corona radiata (from structural connectivity), frontoparietal network (from static connectivity), and executive control network (from dynamic connectivity) compared to the use of structural or functional connectivity only. Our results demonstrated the effectiveness of multimodal imaging data and found brain regions or networks that may be responsible for behaviors of eating disorders in people with abdominal obesity.
Highlights
Obesity is a worldwide medical problem that is responsible for inducing insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers (Raji et al, 2010; Malik et al, 2013; ValLaillet et al, 2015)
We explored the differences in structural and functional connectivity in brain regions and networks related to the behaviors of eating disorders between people with abdominal and non-abdominal obesity with the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and rsfMRI
Our results indicated that altered brain structure and function in people with abdominal and non-abdominal obesity were associated with eating disorders behaviors
Summary
Obesity is a worldwide medical problem that is responsible for inducing insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers (Raji et al, 2010; Malik et al, 2013; ValLaillet et al, 2015). A recent study showed that abdominal obesity was associated with increased risk for Connectivity Changes in Abdominal Obesity cardiovascular disease and mortality, while non-abdominal obesity had fewer adverse effects overall, and in some instances it even elicited protective effects (Zhang et al, 2008) In this context, the concept of metabolically healthy obesity has been extensively accepted (Stefan et al, 2013). Folsom et al (1993, 2000) found that abdominal obesity was a better biomarker for predicting mortality than non-abdominal obesity, and Bujalska et al (1997) demonstrated that the risk of diabetes was better quantified with the waist–hip ratio (WHR), a measure of abdominal obesity, than with the body mass index (BMI), a measure of general obesity. Identifying differences between abdominal and nonabdominal obesity may provide additional information for the better understanding of the diverse characteristics of obesity
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