Low bone mineral density is associated with gray matter volume decrease in UK Biobank

Polona Kalc; Robert Dahnke; Felix Hoffstaedter; Christian Gaser

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2023.1287304

Low bone mineral density is associated with gray matter volume decrease in UK Biobank

Front Aging Neurosci. 2023 Nov 3:15:1287304. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1287304. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Polona Kalc¹, Robert Dahnke^{1

2}, Felix Hoffstaedter^{3

4}, Christian Gaser^{1

2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Structural Brain Mapping Group, Department of Neurology, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany.
² Structural Brain Mapping Group, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany.
³ Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
⁴ Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
⁵ German Center for Mental Health (DZPG), Jena-Halle-Magdeburg, Germany.

Abstract

Objectives: Previous research has found an association of low bone mineral density (BMD) and regional gray matter (GM) volume loss in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We were interested whether BMD is associated with GM volume decrease in brains of a healthy elderly population from the UK Biobank.

Materials and methods: T1-weighted images from 5,518 women (M_Age = 70.20, SD = 3.54; age range: 65-82 years) and 7,595 men (M_Age = 70.84, SD = 3.68; age range: 65-82 years) without neurological or psychiatric impairments were included in voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis in CAT12 with threshold-free-cluster-enhancement (TFCE) across the whole brain.

Results: We found a significant decrease of GM volume in women in the superior frontal gyri, middle temporal gyri, fusiform gyri, temporal poles, cingulate gyri, precunei, right parahippocampal gyrus and right hippocampus, right ventral diencephalon, and right pre- and postcentral gyrus. Only small effects were found in men in subcallosal area, left basal forebrain and entorhinal area.

Conclusion: BMD is associated with low GM volume in women but less in men in regions afflicted in the early-stages of AD even in a sample without neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; UK Biobank; VBM; bone mineral density; osteoporosis.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Carl Zeiss Stiftung as a part of the IMPULS project (IMPULS P2019-01-006), the Federal Ministry of Science and Education (BMBF) under the frame of ERA PerMed (Pattern-Cog ERAPERMED2021-127) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (SmartAge 859890 H2020-MSCA-ITN2019). We acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation Projekt-Nr. 512648189 and the Open Access Publication Fund of the Thueringer Universitaets- und Landesbibliothek Jena.