New study to understand link between paternal obesity and Alzheimer’s Disease

Researchers at the University of Southampton are part of a new study looking at the role of paternal obesity on their children’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s later in life.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia affecting around 600,000 people in the UK today. Changes in the brain have been shown to cause Alzheimer’s up to 20 years before symptoms show, and emerging research has shown lifestyle factors make up part of our risk of developing the disease.

Together with the universities of Lancaster, Kent and Loughborough, the project will use data collected from three generations of participants in the Framingham Heart Study, a large-scale, long-term research project in the US, looking at aspects of people’s life that contribute to heart disease.

The study, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, will compare memory, thinking skills as well as brain structure and markers of Alzheimer’s Disease in the adult children and grandchildren of obese and lean men. They will also induce paternal obesity in mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease to study the behavioural and cellular changes in the brains of adult offspring.

Professor Keith Godfrey, of the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton and the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre will lead the Southampton team.

He said: “Decades of research has shown that a mother’s health and lifestyle choices before conception and during pregnancy have a profound impact on their children’s future health and the risk of them developing conditions such as obesity and heart disease. An important role for the father’s diet and lifestyle before conception is only now being recognised. Up to 40 per cent of dementia cases can be linked to factors that can be changed including lifestyle factors, and recent evidence suggests that paternal obesity could be one of these factors. We hope this project will provide key insight into whether paternal obesity increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and offer an opportunity for interventions strategies to reduce the number of cases of this distressing disease.”