Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston (United States) have detected in mice that diabetes seems to reduce the presence of cholesterol in the brain, necessary for neurons to grow and work correctly, which can have negative consequences for their development, as detailIn a work published in the magazine 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' (PNAS).
In their work they used genetically modified rodents to suppress the production of cholesterol in the brain and, as they have seen, this causes them to have significant neurological deterioration that in turn could explain why patients with diabetes are more risk of Alzheimer's risk.
Scientists have been studying the role that cerebral cholesterol can play in Alzheimer's and one of the reasons is that the mutations in the protein that carries cholesterol, known as APOE, is the strongest genetic risk factor for the development of thisneurodegenerative disease.
Astrocytes, an important type of support cells in the brain, produce most of this cholesterol and therefore in this work the researchers created a mouse model in which a gene known as SREBP2, the main regulator of theSynthesis of cholesterol.
The results were surprising since, "compared to normal rodents, these mice have very small brains and multiple behavioral abnormalities," explained Heather Ferris, author of the investigation.
"These mice not only have problems learning and remembering, but they cannot perform other normal daily tasks such as building a nest," added Ronald Kahn, also a researcher in this work.In addition, these rodents also presented changes in their metabolism, burning more carbohydrates and gaining less weight.
First Diabetes and Alzheimer's link
Researchers believe that this finding is only the beginning of a greater study that analyzes how diabetes and Alzheimer are related, after they have now seen that "cholesterol can be a mediator."
In fact, researchers are creating mouse models that will combine the reduced cholesterol model with Alzheimer's disease models or type 1 or 2 diabetes. Scientists will also analyze the effects of cerebral cholesterol deprivation in adult mice, in addition to rodentsalready modified with this alteration.
"This work is another example of how research in a field of biomedicine can affect the knowledge of another," according to Khan, surprised at this finding when they were trying to understand the effects of diabetes on the brain. "