Diabetes is a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s. What is happening in the patient’s brain?

– Diabetes is the main risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease – believes prof. James Hyman from the University of Nevada in the USA. His research was the first to show what happens in the brain of people with hyperglycemia (too high blood sugar) and how it relates to Alzheimer’s itself. The journal Communications Biology informed about the discovery.

1. Diabetes promotes Alzheimer’s disease. While it is not known exactly why, scientists have found out how
2. Research has shown that chronically elevated blood glucose (hyperglycemia) impairs the brain’s short-term memory performance and changes the way it functions
3. What exactly is happening in a hyperglycemic patient’s brain?
4. More information can be found on the TvoiLokony home page

How can diabetes affect brain function?

– As the number of diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease is growing rapidly and the incidence of diabetes and pre-diabetes has increased, it is extremely important for us to understand what these two disorders have in common – emphasizes Prof. Jefferson Kinney from the Department of Brain Health (University of Nevada). To better understand why diabetes may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, they undertook research that is actually a continuation of the six-year collaboration between the two scientists. What conclusions did they reach?

– Diabetes is a major risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not clear why – admits prof. James Hyman. We show that the main feature of diabetes, hyperglycemia, impairs neuronal activity in a manner similar to that seen in preclinical models of Alzheimer’s disease. This the first evidence that changes in neural activity due to hyperglycemia overlap with what is seen in Alzheimer’s disease – said the scientist. What exactly did the research of Professors Hyman and Kinney show?

Over-communicating two parts of the brain is to blame for memory problems

Scientists found that two parts of the brain that are crucial to creating and retrieving memories: the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate gyrus, were either over-connected or over-synchronized. When it was time to remember the correct information and get the job done, these two parts of the brain – which are affected in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease – over-communicated with each other, causing errors.

– We know that timing is important for the cooperation of different parts of the brain. But we are increasingly finding that the key to neural synchronization is that it has to happen at the right time and it has to happen under control, said Hyman. – Sometimes there are just too many “conversations” between certain areas and we believe that this leads to memory problems among other things.

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– It is possible that patients with Alzheimer’s disease have an overconnection in certain areas where there should be flexibility. In the models in our study, we see real-time evidence of this at key moments, ‘the researcher added.

This discovery not only provides new insight into brain activity in a hyperglycemia model, but is also an additional important parameter that could be used in further research. “Our next step is to combine biochemical markers and electrophysiological data to test the role of specific mechanisms and potential treatments,” said Kinney.

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PAP / Paweł Wernicki

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