Could Diabetes Drugs Help Curb Alzheimer's?

THURSDAY, Nov. 1, 2018 (HealthDay News) – Alzheimer's patients taking diabetes drugs may have fewer signs of dementia in their brains than similar patients not taking drugs, new research finds.

Specifically, the post-mortem study found that people who have taken diabetes meds had less abnormalities in tiny blood vessels in their brains, and less abnormal gene activity.

"The results of this study are important because they give us new insights for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease," said senior study author Vahram Haroutunian, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Earlier studies on brain tissue showed that the brains of people who had Alzheimer's and diabetes had fewer Alzheimer's lesions than brains of people with Alzheimer's with no diabetes.

One Alzheimer's expert said the study highlights the relationship between cardiovascular and brain health.

The findings "remind us of how important it is to keep the disease under control," said Dr. Luca Giliberto. He's Assistant Professor at the Litwin-Zucker Center for Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y.

In the new study, conducted on autopsied brains, Haroutunian and his colleagues developed a way to separate the tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the brain from adjacent brain tissue.

They first used this method of diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

The researchers then compared those findings to an examination of 30 brains from people with Alzheimer's who did not have diabetes, and 19 brains of people who had experienced neither disease.

The study focused on some genetic markers tied to proper brain signaling.

According to the researchers, Alzheimer's and diabetes have been measured in Alzheimer's and diabetes. And the majority of the unhealthy genetic changes that are usually seen in Alzheimer's were missing in patients who had taken diabetes drugs.

This all suggests that diabetes medications have a protective effect on the brains of Alzheimer's patients, the researchers said, which in turn might boost the search for effective therapies.

"Most modern Alzheimer's treatments target amyloid plaques and have not succeeded in treating the disease," Haroutunian said in a Mount Sinai news release.

But the new study focuses on "insulin and diabetes medications such as metformin, [which are] FDA-approved and safely managed to millions of people, "he said.

The new study suggests these drugs may have a beneficial effect on people with Alzheimer's, "Haroutunian said. "This opens the door to the possibility of identifying the biological pathways and types of cells identified in this study."

For his part, Giliberto said the results "are not surprising," since experts have long noted the links between diabetes and blood health.

But he added that the study does not prove that these causes cause Alzheimer's, or whether diabetes medications could stop the brain-wasting disease.

However, "treating chronic hyperglycemia will result in further reduction of insult," Giliberto reasoned. For people with Alzheimer's disease, that "might result in better cognitive performance and quality of life," he said.

Dr. Satjit Bhusri is a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Reviewing the study, he said it "establishes a relationship between the blood vessels of the brain and Alzheimer's disease."

The findings could "open the door to a new pathway that may be of therapeutic use in patients with Alzheimer's disease," Bhusri said.

The report was published online Nov. 1 in the journal PLOS One.

More information

The Alzheimer's Association offers more on Alzheimer's disease.