Diabetes medications reduce the severity of Alzheimer's

What effect medication for Alzheimer's diabetes?

People with Alzheimer's could benefit from cheap diabetes medications. Researchers now found that diabetes medications can reduce the severity of Alzheimer's.

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found in their current research that using diabetes medicines can help people with Alzheimer's disease. The physicians published the results of their study in the English language journal "PLOS ONE".

Diabetes medications protect the blood vessels in the brain?

Experts sought to understand why Alzheimer's patients with type 2 diabetes had less protein accumulation in their brains. For this they examined the tiny blood vessels in the brain of people with both diseases. When patients took diabetes medications, their brains were in better shape. Scientists suspect that the drugs insulin and metformin, which help to regulate blood sugar, also preserve the blood vessels in the brain. This could prevent the presence of dementia-causing toxins, the researchers speculate. For their study, the researchers analyzed the brains of 34 Alzheimer's patients who were also being treated for type 2 diabetes; in addition, 30 non-diabetics with Alzheimer's disease and 19 with neither disease were studied.

Results could lead to a more targeted treatment

The findings do not mean that people who do not have type 2 diabetes should start using diabetes medicines to protect themselves from Alzheimer's disease, says study author Professor Vahram Haroutunian from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The results could lead to a more targeted treatment of Alzheimer's patients in the future. The published study gives cause for hope, because the drugs against diabetes could also reduce the severity of Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain, where the buildup of abnormal proteins causes nerve cells to die.

Further research is needed

Professor Haroutunian says that most modern Alzheimer's treatments are aimed at so-called amyloid plaques but still do not lead to effective treatment of the disease. Diabetes medications can reduce the abnormalities of blood vessels found in Alzheimer's disease, which can help prevent toxins and introduce important nutrients. Further studies should now be performed on people using similar medicines. In addition, drugs that have similar effects on the biological pathways and cell types of the brain identified in this study should also be further investigated, the authors of the study explain. (As)