Diabetes medications can reduce Alzheimer's disease severity

People with Alzheimer's Disease who have been treated with diabetes compared to other diseases, including abnormal microvasculature and disregulated gene expression-in their brains compared to Alzheimer's patients without treatment for diabetes, Mount Sinai researchers report.

Results of the study will be published PLOS One online on November 1st at 2PM.

This is the first study to examine what happens in the pathways of both brain tissue and endothelial cells-the cells lining blood vessels-in the brains of Alzheimer's patients treated with diabetes medication. The results of the study will inform future Alzheimer's disease studies and potential new therapies targeting specific cells, since they suggest that targeting the brain's capillary system could have beneficial effects in Alzheimer's patients.

Many elderly people with Alzheimer's disease. Despite this linkage, two previous Mount Sinai studies on brain tissue found that the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes had less Alzheimer's lesions than the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease without diabetes. The results suggest that anti-diabetes medications had a protective effect on the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients.

To determine what happens on the molecular level, this Mount Sinai research team developed a method to separate brain capillaries from the brain tissue of 34 people with Alzheimer's and type 2 diabetes who had been treated with anti-diabetes drugs and compared them to tissue from 30 brains of people with Alzheimer's without diabetes and 19 brains of people without Alzheimer's or diabetes. (Because most people who have diabetes are treated with insulin or oral medications, the scientists were unable to compare their results with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes who were not treated with anti-diabetes drugs.)

RNA markers for brain capillary cells and insulin signaling.

Alzheimer's and diabetes. The great majority of RNA changes in Alzheimer's disease were absent in those Alzheimer's patients who had been treated with anti-diabetes drugs.

"The results of this study are important because they give us new insights for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease," said the study's senior author, Vahram Haroutunian, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. .

"Most modern Alzheimer's treatments target amyloid plaques and have not succeeded in effectively treating the disease," said Dr. Haroutunian. "Insulin and diabetes medications such as metformin are FDA approved and safely administered to millions of people and appear to have a beneficial effect on Alzheimer's. the brains' biological pathways and cell types identified in this study. "

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