How are diabetes and dementia related

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The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

National Institute on Aging 

SUGAR raises diabetes AND dementia risk. Will research into the hormone "amylin" reveal the reason why?

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University of California's Dr. Robert Lustig built a team of statisticians and epidemiologists to look at the relationship between food and diabetes risk. The now famous paper on sugar and diabetes, published in the professional journal PLoS One, found that the more sugar on the market in 175 countries, the higher the country's diabetes rate.

Professor Lustig said, "I'm not suggesting sugar is the only cause of diabetes. But in this analysis it was the only thing that predicted it. And it was worldwide and over a decade."

The researchers found that for every can of sweetened soda available per person per day (150 calories), diabetes in the population rose 1%. The same number of calories any other type of food only caused a 0.1 percent increase in a population's diabetes rate over the past decade.

The researchers took into account obesity, exercise, along with various societal and economic variables.

Sugar & Dementia

Related:

• Sugar & Dementia(VIDEO+SLIDESHOW)
  
• Insulin & Alzheimer's(HBO)
  
• Alzheimer's Disease Is Type 3 Diabetes – Evidence Reviewed (STUDY)
  
• Is Sugar Really to Blame for Alzheimer's?
  
• Sugar and
  Alzheimer's
  
• Less Sugar, More Memory
  (VIDEO+ARTICLE)
  

In the video and article entitled, "Sugar and Dementia,"  researchers shared rich data demonstrating that the more sugar a person eats, the higher their risk for dementia.

Is all this research connected? Is there a sugar - diabetes - dementia triangle?

A study at the NIA-funded Alzheimer's Disease Center at the University of California, Davis, suggests they are connected by the hormone called "amylin".

Deposits of the hormone amylin in the brain may indicate risk for developing dementia and type 2 diabetes, according to this study published online in the Annals of Neurology. The analysis is the first to identify amylin deposits in post-mortem brain tissue from older people who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's or vascular dementia and diabetes. The findings also indicated that amylin may play a similar role in the Alzheimer's disease process as amyloid protein, a hallmark of the disorder.

Amylin (also known as islet amyloid polypeptide) is a hormone expressed and secreted with insulin. It influences blood sugar levels; when too much is secreted, risk for developing diabetes increases. These new findings show that amylin deposits can also build up and form plaques in the brain, similar to amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer's disease.

The researchers examined post-mortem brain tissue from three groups of volunteers older than 70 years: those who had diabetes and dementia (vascular dementia or Alzheimer's), those who had Alzheimer's but no diabetes, and those free of these disorders. Investigators found significant amylin deposits in the brain tissue of people with both dementia and diabetes. Surprisingly, they also found amylin in people with Alzheimer's but without diabetes—perhaps because these individuals had undiagnosed insulin resistance. The healthy controls had few amylin deposits.

The study, led by Dr. Florin Despa, may explain why people with diabetes are at risk for dementia. Like amyloid, amylin circulates in the blood and, during the disease process, is overproduced and not cleared normally, building up in the brain. Over time, both proteins lead to the loss of brain cells and brain damage. Amylin buildup in the brain's blood vessels may also play a role in amyloid buildup and contribute to risk for Alzheimer's, the study found.

All this research also furthers the growing body of science pointing to Alzheimer's as a form of "type-3 diabetes".

Reference: Jackson K, et al. Amylin deposition in the brain: A second amyloid in Alzheimer's disease? Annals of Neurology. Published online June 22, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/ana.23956. - See more at: http://www.nia.nih.gov/announcements/2013/07/amylin-deposits-brain-may-link-dementia-and-diabetes#sthash.csCcUV9V.dpuf

Is Alzheimers a type of diabetes

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

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The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition

Alzheimer's and Dementia Weekly

MEMORY PROBLEMS are an early sign of Alzheimer's. New research directly links these problems to sugar (glucose) deprivation in brain cells. In diabetes, a well-known Alzheimer's risk factor, sugar is blocked from entering cells. How likely does this make the Alzheimer's-sugar-diabetes triangle? 

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(Philadelphia, PA) - One of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease is a decline in glucose levels in the brain. It appears in the early stages of mild cognitive impairment -- before symptoms of memory problems begin to surface. Whether it is a cause or consequence of neurological dysfunction has been unclear, but new research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University now shows unequivocally that glucose deprivation in the brain triggers the onset of cognitive decline, memory impairment in particular. 

As diabetes is a condition in which glucose cannot enter the cell, this research gives good reason to suggest that Alzheimer's is caused by a pathway similar or related to a type of diabetes. This possibility is strengthened by the fact that insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes is a known risk factor for dementia. 

"In recent years, advances in imaging techniques, especially positron emission tomography (PET), have allowed researchers to look for subtle changes in the brains of patients with different degrees of cognitive impairment," explained Domenico Praticò, MD, Professor in the Center for Translational Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM). "One of the changes that has been consistently reported is a decrease in glucose availability in the hippocampus." 

The hippocampus plays a key role in processing and storing memories. It and other regions of the brain, however, rely exclusively on glucose for fuel -- without glucose, neurons starve and eventually die. 

The new study, published online January 31 in the journal Translational Psychiatry, is the first to directly link memory impairment to glucose deprivation in the brain specifically through a mechanism involving the accumulation of a protein known as phosphorylated tau. 

New spin to understanding of relationship between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals, here is some great information


Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,


Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire


Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be


Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care  professionals to get an easyceu or two


Follow alzheimersideas on twitter

The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition

News medical.net

A new spin to our understanding of the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, which could point to a therapeutic target for both diseases, is published in a research report in the June 2012 issue of the journal Genetics. In the report, scientists from City College of New York-City University of New York (CCNY-CUNY) show that a gene in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which is similar to a human gene correlated with Alzheimer's disease, is involved in multiple metabolic pathways, including the insulin pathway.
"Mutations in three genes, including the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, have been correlated with the inherited form of Alzheimer's disease in humans," said Chris Li, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Biology at CCNY-CUNY. "Because the equivalent gene we're studying in the model organism C. elegans is involved in many metabolic pathways, it suggests that the human version of the gene likely also plays a role -- not only in Alzheimer's disease, but in diabetes as well," Li added.
To make this discovery, these investigators studied worms with mutations in the Alzheimer's-related gene (APL-1) along with mutations in genes in the insulin pathway, and found that the Alzheimer's-related gene influenced metabolic pathways during the worms' development. They also found that, while mutations in the Alzheimer's-like gene caused severe disruptions in the worm's development, certain compensatory mutations in the insulin pathway reversed those defects. This discovery is important because it helps explain how these genes are functionally linked in a common pathway, and gives a possible explanation for the apparent link between Alzheimer's and diabetes in humans. Scientists hope that this new insight will help focus research in ways that might lead to new therapies in the treatment of both Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.
"This is an important discovery, especially as it comes on the heels of the U.S. government's new commitment to treat and prevent Alzheimer's disease by 2025," said Mark Johnston, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of Genetics. "We know there's a link between Alzheimer's and diabetes, but until now, it was somewhat of a mystery. This finding could open new doors for treating and preventing both diseases."

Source: Genetics Society of America

Diabetics are fifty percent more likely to develop dementia

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Philly.com

Several large studies have shown that people with diabetes are at especially high risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Steven Arnold, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Memory Center, said diabetics are 50 to 100 percent more likely to get the fatal, memory-destroying disease.

This has made researchers increasingly interested in the role that insulin, the hormone that's out of whack in diabetes, might play in Alzheimer's.
In the brain, Arnold said, insulin is important for cell growth and releasing neurotransmitters that allow cells to communicate. It enhances learning and memory.

Arnold is the senior author of a new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that looked at the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment, often a precursor to dementia. He found insulin resistance in their brains, even though the people did not have diabetes. Arnold said the chemical differences between those who did and did not have memory problems were striking. "I've never seen a difference this large," he said.

When cells are insulin resistant, insulin is present but the cells don't respond as much as they normally would. Insulin resistance is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, the kind that 90 percent of American diabetics have. Untreated, it leads to high blood sugar.

Arnold's team studied brain samples taken from people who had died. Even in dead cells, several steps of chemical reactions could be seen. The study found "tremendous abnormalities pretty much all the way down the line" in people with Alzheimer's.

There's no easy way to test brain insulin resistance in the living. Arnold said it's likely that people with diabetes have brain insulin resistance, but others could have it, too.

Many diabetes drugs are designed to lower blood sugar, but some act as insulin sensitizers. Arnold is now seeking funding to test whether one such drug, metformin, can help people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment.

- Stacey Burling

Study: Dementia meds up older diabetics' hyperglycemia risk

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USA Today

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay

Older diabetics who take antipsychotic medications have an increased risk of ending up in the hospital with elevated blood glucose levels, or hyperglycemia, researchers say.
More and more seniors are being prescribed these medications for dementia and other conditions, the study authors noted in their report in the July 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

In the study, Dr. Lorraine L. Lipscombe of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences at the University of Toronto and Women's College Research Institute at Women's College Hospital in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues looked at 13,817 diabetic patients who were 66 and older. These patients started taking antipsychotics between April 2002 and March 2006.

The researchers compared these patients' hospitalization rates for hyperglycemia with the rates of patients who had stopped taking antipsychotic medications for more than 180 days.

"Our study indicates that the initiation of antipsychotic therapy represents a critical period during which seniors with diabetes are particularly vulnerable to metabolic decompensation [the failure of the metabolic system to function adequately]," the authors wrote in a news release. "The new use of both atypical [newer] and typical antipsychotic drugs was associated with a significant increase in hospitalizations for hyperglycemia, which appeared independent of baseline diabetes treatment and was strikingly high during the initial period of antipsychotic therapy."

Other studies suggest that the....read more of Dementia meds up older diabetics' hyperglycemia risk

Dementia looks different in diabetic brain: study

Rueters
By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People with diabetes who develop dementia have different types of brain changes than others with dementia, a finding that could change the way drug companies think about treatments for Alzheimer's, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

"It suggests that there may be two pathways contributing to the dementia," Suzanne Craft of the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound in Washington, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. "These two pathways may require different forms of treatment."

Her study, reported in the Archives of Neurology, is among the first to compare different brain injuries in diabetics and others with dementia, and it found some curious differences.

Non-diabetics with dementia had an excess of sticky clumps in the brain known as beta-amyloid plaques, while diabetics, especially those who took insulin, had injuries to small blood vessels in the brain known as arterioles and more swelling in nerve tissue, Craft and colleagues found.

She said most of the people in the study had Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, and most shared similar symptoms of dementia before their deaths.

"Despite those similarities, they had very........read the whole article

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