Abstract
Obesity is known to have an intricate relationship with the development of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (mid-life obesity increases risk, whereas late-life adiposity may also have an effect). In this context, adipokines and satiety signals are suggested to play a role in late life, but their association with the incidence of these outcomes remains unclear. Our study aimed to assess whether five selected plasma adipokines and satiety hormones (leptin, ghrelin, resistin, adipsin, and fibroblast growth factor-21) were associated with incident Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in older adults at high cardiovascular risk in a nested case-control study within the PREDIMED trial (90 dementia cases [73 of which were Alzheimer’s disease], 156 controls). Participants were at high cardiovascular disease risk but free from dementia at baseline. Associations with biomarkers were assessed using multivariable conditional logistic regression. Higher resistin levels were associated with higher incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in the multivariable-adjusted model (per one SD increase: OR 1.56, 95% CI 1.02 to 2.38); additional adjustment for body mass index slightly attenuated the association (OR 1.52, 95% CI 0.99 to 2.34). Our findings should be replicated in larger prospective studies but suggest that, despite the complex association between anthropometric measures and the incidence of dementia, high levels of resistin were tentatively associated with greater odds of incident Alzheimer’s disease in older adults at high cardiovascular risk.