McMaster research links ultra-processed foods to risk of brain damage - CHCH

What can more than 100,000 medical scans reveal about the fat that burns energy, and why are researchers examining an everyday blood pressure medication? Study: Artificial intelligence-enabled clinical phenotyping of human brown fat. Image Credit: Love Employee / Shutterstock

In a recent study involving nearly 3,000 brain MRI examinations, researchers found a significant association between residing in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and deteriorating brain health indicators. The findings were published in Radiology. John-Paul J. Yu, MD, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, highlighted the study's implications, noting, "We’ve shown very robust, measurable metrics that our living environment has an outsized impact on the brain at the molecular and cellular level. "This retrospective analysis examined whether individuals living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods showed higher brain age gaps and decreased total brain volume. The brain age gap reflects the difference between a person's actual age and their brain's apparent age as estimated from MRI data. The researchers evaluated brain MRIs from 2,826 patients—1,094 men and 1,732 women—aged 18 to 96. The imaging data was collected from consecutive clinical MRI examinations at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics from January to June 2024. Patients with imaging evidence of existing disease were excluded from the study