Rhode Island study claims Alzheimer's operates much like diabetes

• "Insulin disappears early and dramatically in Alzheimer's disease," senior researcher Suzanne M. de la Monte, a neuropathologist at Rhode Island Hospital and a professor of pathology at Brown University Medical School, said in a prepared statement.
• "And many of the unexplained features of Alzheimer's, such as cell death and tangles in the brain, appear to be linked to abnormalities in insulin signaling.
• This demonstrates that the disease is most likely a neuroendocrine disorder, or another type of diabetes," she added.
• Now her group has discovered that brain levels of insulin and its related cellular receptors fall precipitously during the early stages of Alzheimer's.
• Insulin levels continue to drop progressively as the disease becomes more severe --- adding to evidence that Alzheimer's might be a new form of diabetes, she said.
• In addition, the Brown University team found that low levels of acetylcholine --- a hallmark of Alzheimer's --- are directly linked to this loss of insulin and insulin-like growth factor function in the brain.
• They found that as the severity of Alzheimer's increased, the levels of insulin receptors and the brain's ability to respond to insulin decreased.
• This creates a resistance to the insulin growth factors, causing the cells to malfunction and die.
• We're able to show it's linked to poor energy metabolism, and it's linked to abnormalities that contribute to the tangles characteristic of advanced Alzheimer's disease.
• This study adds support to these biological hypotheses and has perhaps treatment implications for the use of certain types of anti-diabetes drugs that influence insulin resistance, Hendrie said.
• "There are many other factors also implicated in Alzheimer's disease, such as hypertension and inflammation, so I think it's a bit of a stretch at the moment to describe Alzheimer's disease as an endocrinological disorder like diabetes," he said.