Diabetes and Alzheimers

Wow. I'm doing a bit of work for a new client on healthcare devices and stumbled across some information that really surprises me. There are similarities between Alzheimer's disease and what happens in a failing pancreas that produces diabetes.

Equally surprising, there seems to be a link between the two--people with diabetes seem to be more likely to develop Alzheimers. This story from the July 16 issue of the New York Times seems to sum up the story:

"Several new studies suggest that diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, adding to a store of evidence that links the disorders. The studies involve only Type 2 diabetes, the most common kind, which is usually related to obesity.

The connection raises an ominous prospect: that increases in diabetes, a major concern in the United States and worldwide, may worsen the rising toll from Alzheimer’s. The findings also add dementia to the cloud of threats that already hang over people with diabetes, including heart disease, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.

But some of the studies also hint that measures to prevent or control diabetes may lower the dementia risk, and that certain diabetes drugs should be tested to find whether they can help Alzheimer’s patients, even those without diabetes. Current treatments for Alzheimer’s can provide only a modest improvement in symptoms and cannot stop the progression of the disease."

For me, despite all the talk, money and attention devoted to cancer and to Alzheimers, diabetes has always seemed to be the 'disease of our age.' Especially Type II diabetes. Diabetes is a reflection of our lifestyle--and no, I'm not talking about lazy diet choices and watching too much TV, although they are certainly factors. What I mean is that our work has become sedentary, our transportation has become sedentary, our hobbies have become sedentary, and our diet is still based on what humans needed to maintain body weight when they consumed 4-6,000 calories a day. We now burn fractionally more calories than someone in a coma...

More from the Times article: "Alzheimer’s affects 1 in 10 people over age 65, and nearly half of people over 85. About 4.5 million Americans have it, and taking care of them costs $100 billion a year, according to the association. The number of patients is expected to grow, possibly reaching 11.3 million to 16 million by 2050, the association said.

But those projections do not include a possible increase from diabetes.

“Alzheimer’s is going to swamp the health care system,” said Dr. John C. Morris, a neurology professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an adviser to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Not everyone with diabetes gets Alzheimer’s, and not all Alzheimer’s patients are diabetic. But in the past decade, several large studies have found that compared with healthy people of the same age and sex, those with Type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s. The reason is not known, but researchers initially suspected that cardiovascular problems caused by diabetes might contribute to dementia by blocking blood flow to the brain or causing strokes.

More recently, though, scientists have begun to think that the diseases are connected in other ways as well. In both, destructive deposits of amyloid, a type of protein, build up: in the brain in Alzheimer’s, in the pancreas in Type 2 diabetes.

People with Type 2 often have a condition called insulin resistance, in which their cells cannot properly use insulin, the hormone needed to help glucose leave the blood and enter cells that need it. To compensate, the pancreas makes extra insulin, which can reach high levels in the blood. Too much insulin may lead to inflammation, which can contribute to damage in the brain."

The good news is, that since diet and exercise can help ward off Type II diabetes, it also can help prevent dementia.

So get on out there.

Comments

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[Sharon Vegoe]

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Disease.com