Jakarta - A new study suggests that weight loss and metabolic changes can occur in the early stages of dementia, a decline in cognitive function that affects memory, thinking and the ability to perform daily activities that often occurs in older adults.
"Dementia develops for years before symptoms appear," says Zimu Wu, PhD, a chronic disease and aging researcher at Monash University in Australia, and one of the study's authors.
"This study suggests that weight loss and metabolic changes may occur during the early phase," he was quoted as saying in a Health release on February 28, 2025.
In the study, researchers followed healthy older adults with and without dementia for 11 years to assess how cardiometabolic risk factors such as obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure could be early markers of dementia later in life.
The study, conducted from 2010 to 2022 and involving nearly 5,400 participants, examined measures of cardiometabolic health such as body mass index, waist circumference, blood pressure, and levels of glucose, triglycerides, LDL (bad cholesterol), HDL (good cholesterol), and total cholesterol.
In the end, there were 1,078 people with dementia and 4,312 people without dementia in the study.
Those with dementia had a lower baseline body mass index and experienced a sharper decline in the index starting at least 11 years before dementia was diagnosed.
In addition, the study published in the February 2025 issue of JAMA Network Open showed that those with dementia had significantly lower waist circumferences 10 years before diagnosis.