Deposits of a hormone called amylin in the brain may indicate risk for developing dementia and type 2 diabetes. The analysis by researchers at the NIA-funded Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center at the University of California, Davis, is the first to identify amylin deposits in post-mortem brain tissue from older people who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease or vascular dementia and diabetes. The findings also indicated that amylin may play a similar role in the Alzheimer\u2019s disease process as amyloid protein, a hallmark of the disorder. Amylin (also known as islet amyloid polypeptide) is a hormone expressed and secreted with insulin. It influences blood sugar levels; when too much is secreted, risk for developing diabetes increases. These new findings show that amylin deposits can also build up and form plaques in the brain, similar to amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer\u2019s disease. The researchers examined post-mortem brain tissue from three groups of volunteers older than 70 years: those who had diabetes and dementia (vascular dementia or Alzheimer\u2019s), those who had Alzheimer\u2019s but no diabetes, and those free of these disorders. Investigators found significant amylin deposits in the brain tissue of people with both dementia and diabetes. Surprisingly, they also found amylin in people with Alzheimer\u2019s but without diabetes\u2014perhaps because these individuals had undiagnosed insulin resistance. The healthy controls had few amylin deposits. The study, led by Dr. Florin Despa, may explain why people with diabetes are at risk for dementia. Like amyloid, amylin circulates in the blood and, during the disease process, is overproduced and not cleared normally, building up in the brain. Over time, both proteins lead to the loss of brain cells and brain damage. Amylin buildup in the brain\u2019s blood vessels may also play a role in amyloid buildup and contribute to risk for Alzheimer\u2019s, the study found.\nNational Institute on Ageing<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deposits of a hormone called amylin in the brain may indicate risk for developing dementia and type 2 diabetes. The analysis by researchers at the NIA-funded Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center at the University of California, Davis, is the first to identify amylin deposits in post-mortem brain tissue from older people who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}