These days, the Zika virus is the commonly pointed out culprit when it comes to microcephaly. While it is true that the emergence of this deadly disease has caused a dramatic rise in the number of microcephaly cases over the recent years, there is another cause of microcephaly that has been around for much, much longer. The cause in question is obesity.
The main difference between Zika virus and obesity is that Zika causes microcephaly in fetuses or in newborn children, whilst obesity causes this later in life, most notably in middle age. According to a report from Medscape, people who were obese had significantly smaller volumes of white matter. This white matter is important as it allows the nerve cells in the brain to communicate more efficiently.
In the study; however, the reduced white matter volume was not shown to have a significant effect on cognitive function and the implications of the study still remain unclear. However, it is important to not that the study also found that being overweight or obese can lead to serious brain atrophy and may even accelerate the brain aging process by as much as 10 years.
"Although our results raise the possibility that being overweight or obese may increase the risk for developing age-related disorders linked to neurodegeneration, it is important to acknowledge that we found no such links in our current study, which included only adults who were cognitively healthy at the time of recruitment," says Dr. Lisa Ronan, the lead author of the study.
The team behind the study plan to continue their research n order to determine whether being overweight has a significant effect on neurological health. This is in line with current efforts to find ways that would enable experts to attribute obesity to health problems and to problems in our everyday lives.
