Obesity and Multiple Sclerosis

After my article on the links between Vitamin D and MS, one astute follower noted that the worldwide incidence of MS could also be found to correlate with levels of obesity around the world. Based on this and their question about the link, we have put together this brief article summarizing what we currently know about the association between obesity and multiple sclerosis.

We all know that obesity increases our risk of developing heart disease, having a stroke or developing Type 2 diabetes. Does obesity increase your risk of developing multiple sclerosis though? If recent population studies are anything to go by, the answer is yes. Papers published in the science journal, Neurology, in 2009 and 2013 indicated that obesity was indeed a risk factor for MS. Interestingly, both studies found that this link was restricted to women and was most prominent during adolescence and early adulthood. The 2013 article also noted that the risk increased significantly with increasing weight (ranging from 1.5 times greater risk for girls who were overweight to 4 times higher risk for those with extreme obesity). The increased levels of childhood obesity over the past 30 years were used to explain the increase observed in the number of paediatric cases of MS (diagnosed between the ages of 2 and 18).

So while these observations are interesting, how do they fit into the overall MS picture? The answer is that researchers don’t really know. One possibility, as with all population based studies, is that the relationship seen is purely coincidental. That is, that although more people with obesity were seen to develop MS, obesity did not actually play any role in the disease development. However, the striking results do seem to warrant further investigation. In keeping with our initial article about Vitamin D, one hypothesis that has been discussed is that Vitamin D deficiency does correlate with increased body mass index. Could obesity somehow lead to Vitamin D deficiency and that then increases the risk of MS? Unfortunately, we don’t have the answers yet, but it is another piece of the puzzle that we have and are now trying to work out where it fits.