Association between Body Mass Index and Cognitive Performance.

Background: Because of well-established role of obesity in brain lesions, progressing cognitive deficits in obese patients has been recently suggested. In current study and for the first time, we aimed to assess cognition status in Iranian obese people and to compare it with non-obese individuals.

Methods: One hundred and eighteen consecutive patients with the different cardiovascular and metabolic primary complaints were assigned to obese group (n = 25, 21.2%) and non-obese group (n = 93, 78.8%). Cognitive status was assessed at initial visiting using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) questionnaire.

Results: Mean total cognitive score in obese patients was 20.04 ± 4.57 and in non-obese ones was 20.19 ± 5.32 with no difference (p = 0.886). In total, 8.0% of obese patients and 20.4% of non-obese patients had normal cognitive function (p = 0.149). No significant difference was also found in different subdomains of cognitive ability between obese and non-obese groups. None of the cognitive domains had significant association with BMI as the considered indicator for defining obesity. Based on multivariate linear regression modeling, obesity could not predict cognitive deficit (beta = 0.034, SE = 0.1.015, p = 0.973).

Conclusion: Our survey could not demonstrate an association obesity and cognitive impairment in a sample of Iranian patients.