Alzheimer's And Diabetes

Alzheimer's And Diabetes

A very interesting article from February 2, 2009 Reuters about a possible link between Alzheimer's and diabetes:

CHICAGO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Insulin appears to shield the brain from toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday, supporting a theory that Alzheimer's may be a third form of diabetes.

And they said GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L) diabetes drug Avandia, or rosiglitazone, which increases sensitivity to insulin, appeared to enhance this protective effect.

"Our results demonstrate that bolstering insulin signaling can protect neurons from harm," William Klein of Northwestern University, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.

Klein said the findings support a new idea that Alzheimer's is a type of diabetes of the brain.

"In Type 1 diabetes, your pancreas isn't making insulin. In Type 2 diabetes, your tissues are insensitive to insulin because of problems in the insulin receptor. Type 3 is where that insulin receptor problem is localized in the brain," Klein said in a telephone interview.

In some people, this can occur with age, he said.

"As you get older, some individuals start to have less effective insulin signaling, including in the brain," he said, making the brain more vulnerable to toxins that cause Alzheimer's disease.

Large sticky plaques of amyloid beta protein are a hallmark of Alzheimer's, which causes memory loss, confusion, the inability to care for oneself and eventually death.

Recent studies by Klein and others have suggested that short strands of the protein, known as amyloid beta-derived diffusible ligands or ADDLs, attack memory-forming brain cells, causing memory loss.

Continue the research! As Instapundit likes to say, "Faster, please."