Word: insulin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...potential success of the combination strategy was borne out in some of the conference's most exciting papers. Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported, for example, that compared with other Alzheimer's patients, those who had diabetes and took insulin plus another anti-diabetes medication to control blood sugar had 80% fewer amyloid plaques - the sticky brain-clogging masses that, together with protein tangles, are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Although the mechanism wasn't entirely clear, researchers think the drugs may work by normalizing the brain's communication network of insulin receptors, which goes awry...
Compared with patients who never developed diabetes, patients who had the disease but took insulin along with one additional medication to control blood sugar (typically metformin or glyburide) had 80% fewer brain-clogging amyloid plaques in their brain. Build up of these protein plaques, which are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, can interfere with normal communication between nerve cells and cause deficits in memory and cognition. "The group on combination therapy had a very, very low load of neuritic plaques," Beeri says. "Their brains looked almost like normal people." The medications did not, however, do much...
Beeri and her group are already trying to figure out how - and why - the combination therapies might curb plaque formation but leave the tangles alone. One theory is that the drugs normalize the communication network of insulin receptors, which go awry in the Alzheimer's brain, somehow restoring those pathways to as close to normal as possible, while clearing out the damaging plaques that form when the network malfunctions. "Our hypothesis is that with the combination therapy, the gene and protein expression of these Alzheimer's patients might be close to that of normal people who don't have Alzheimer...
...scribble a prescription than it is to get young patients to eat better and exercise more. And then there's the possible cascade effect. "We can add statins to help overweight children," says Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston. "But what about the next problem that comes up - insulin resistance and fatty liver. Are we going to keep adding drug after drug? That possibility just makes me want...
Overloading the body with too many calories and keeping insulin levels high short-circuits this loop and can lead to insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, in which organs no longer respond to changing insulin levels. The result: a brain and body that are constantly hungry and in need of more food. Disrupting the insulin threshold usually takes decades--which explains why this form of diabetes was generally more common in adults over age 30 and why the more genetically driven Type 1 diabetes was more prevalent among children. Before 1994, only about 5% of school-age children with...