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Thursday, November 28, 2013

CONNECTION BETWEEN ALZHEIMER'S AND DIABETES


Are Alzheimer's and diabetes the same disease?
 
By Jessica Griggs - New Scientist's Special Report
  
HAVING type 2 diabetes may mean you are already on the path to Alzheimer's.   This startling claim comes from a study linking the two diseases more intimately than ever before.
 
There is some good news: the same research also offers a way to reverse memory problems associated with diabetes – albeit in rats – which may hint at a new treatment for Alzheimer's.In 2005, a study by Susanne de la Monte's group at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, identified a reason why people with type 2 diabetes had a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's.
 
In this kind of dementia, the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, seemed to be insensitive to insulin. Not only could your liver, muscle and fat cells be "diabetic" but so it seemed, could your brain.
 
Feeding animals a diet designed to give them type 2 diabetes leaves their brains riddled with insoluble plaques of a protein called beta-amyloid – one of the calling cards of Alzheimer's. We also know that insulin plays a key role in memory.
 
Taken together, the findings suggest that Alzheimer's might be caused by a type of brain diabetes.
 
If that is the case, the memory problems that often accompany type 2 diabetes may in fact be early-stage Alzheimer's rather than mere cognitive decline.
 
Although there is no definitive consensus on the exact causes of Alzheimer's, we do know that brains get clogged with beta-amyloid plaques.
 
One idea gaining ground is that it is not the plaques themselves that cause the symptoms, but their precursors – small, soluble clumps of beta-amyloid called oligomers. The insoluble plaques could actually be the brain's way of trying to isolate the toxic oligomers.

Read more - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029453.400-are-alzheimers-and-diabetes-the-same-disease.html?full=true#.Upc7-qEWKM8

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2516438/Could-Alzheimers-Type-2-diabetes-Scientists-claim-extra-insulin-produced-disease-disrupts-brain-chemistry.html

 
RELATED

 
NEW HOPE FOR ALZHEIMER'S, DEMENTIA AND BRAIN DAMAGE PATIENTS WITH ISRAELI TREATMENT
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/11/new-hope-for-alzheimers-dementia-and.html

 
USING LASERS TO CURE ALZHEIMER'S
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/11/using-lasers-to-cure-alzheimers.html


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