Taking an anti-diabetic would reduce the amount of amyloid plaques in the brain, those responsible for Alzheimer’s disease.
- Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90% of diabetes cases.
- This disease is one of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.
- Too high blood sugar levels could promote the production of amyloid plaques.
Type 2 diabetes is one of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, but the drugs that treat it would have a protective effect. In the specialist journal Neurology, scientists find that people treated with these drugs have fewer amyloid plaques, compared to people with diabetes not treated with these treatments, and to people without the disease. The anti-diabetics observed by the researchers belong to the category of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, also called gliptins.
What is type 2 diabetes?
When a person has type 2 diabetes, their body can no longer use insulin properly to regulate blood sugar levels. Gliptins are prescribed to help the body control blood sugar levels, along with dietary measures and exercise.
Fewer amyloid plaques
In this research, the authors recruited 282 people, aged 76 on average. They were either suffering from an early Alzheimer’s disease, or at a pre-clinical stage or probably affected. Among them, 70 people were being treated for type 2 diabetes, 71 had it but were not taking these drugs and 141 did not have diabetes. Using brain scans, the researchers were able to estimate the amount of amyloid plaques. “People with diabetes who took the drugs had lower amounts of amyloid plaques in the brain, compared to people with diabetes who did not take the drugs and compared to people without diabetes“, they conclude.
Better results on memory tests
At the same time, memory tests were carried out: taking into account all the factors that could affect the results, the scientists observed that people with diabetes taking the treatment had a slower annual decline in their results, compared to the rest of the people recruited. for the study. These results raise the hypothesis that the treatments could also be beneficial for people with memory problems or cognitive disorders in general. The researchers specify that their study does not attest to a causal link, only to a correlation between these two factors. Further studies will be needed to demonstrate the beneficial effects of this anti-diabetic treatment on Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline.
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