Both Obesity and Bipolar Disorders in 2249 Individuals Show White Matter Microstructure Abnormalities
Lorielle Dietze of Dalhousie University “obtained body mass index (BMI) and diffusion tensor imaging derived fractional anisotropy (FA) values from 930 individuals with bipolar disorders (BD), and 1319 control individuals from 20 cohorts in the ENIGMA-BD Working Group.”
They “found that lower FA was associated with both BD and BMI, in five white matter tracts, including the corpus callosum and thalamic radiation. Nine ROIs were correlated with only BD, while higher BMI was uniquely correlated with lower FA in four white matter ROIs.”
They concluded: “For the first time we showed that both obesity and BD demonstrated lower FA in some of the same regions. The impact of obesity may be greater in some tracts in BD individuals.”