Saturday, March 11, 2006

Could Alzheimer's be a form of diabetes?

Home: "An intriguing new study from Brown University has linked declining insulin production in the brain to Alzheimer's disease, leading inevitably to the question - could Alzheimer's be a form of diabetes?

'Insulin disappears early and dramatically in Alzheimer's disease,' says senior researcher Suzanne M. de la Monte, a neuropathologist at Rhode Island Hospital and a professor of pathology at Brown University Medical School.

'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.'"

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