“Type 3 diabetes”?

 

That is what some researchers are calling a new connection between Alzheimer’s and diabetes discovered during research from Rhode Island Hospital.  Interfering with her lab animals’ insulin uptake, researcher Suzanne de la Monte not only triggered obesity in the animals but a disorientation that signaled dementia.  Poor sensitivity to insulin is usually associated with type 2 diabetes, which the lab animals expressed when their bodies failed to respond to the insulin hormone. But the confusion and disorientation they expressed suggested a progressing link between obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

 

This new connection adds to existing research that has demonstrated how neurons in the brain need insulin to extract energy, especially in the hippocampus and frontal lobe, areas of the brain associated with memory and learning. The growing consensus of recent research is saying that the “epidemic” of diabetes sweeping theU.S. will likely be followed by an equally large epidemic of dementia.

 

Can the current healthcare system deal with that?

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