Diabetes Linked to Brain Disorders

By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor

posted: 08 June 2010 04:59 pm ET
source http://www.livescience.com/health/insulin-diabetes-brain-disoders-
100608.html

Malfunctions in how the body processes sugar that occur in diabetes and obesity could also explain

mood and other mental disorders such as schizophrenia, researchers now reveal.

People with diabetes have problems processing insulin, the hormone that helps regulate sugar in the

body. Scientists knew diabetics had an increased risk of psychiatric disorders, said researcher Kevin

Niswender, an endocrinologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

"In the diabetic population, 25 percent are depressed — in the normal population, it's only 10

percent," researcher Aurelio Galli, a biophysicist at Vanderbilt, told LiveScience.

Galli had earlier helped find that insulin also regulates the brain's supply of dopamine, a

neurotransmitter with roles in attention, reward and motor activity. Disruptions in dopamine activity

have been linked to brain disorders such as depression, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and

attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

In new experiments, the researchers developed mice with an insulin-processing defect present only in

their neurons. This was aimed at mimicking the disruptions in the insulin system caused by

diabetes, high-fat diets, drug abuse and natural genetic variations in the brain.

The scientists found that rodents with this insulin defect had behavioral anomalies similar to ones

frequently seen in patients with schizophrenia.

"So these abnormalities are quite simple," Galli explained. "Let's say you scare a person by yelling at

them from behind. If you prepare this person with a sound test before you yell at them, they will

normally be startled less, because they're more prepared for it. In people with schizophrenia, they're

startled even if you prepare them beforehand. Now it doesn't mean that you have schizophrenia if you

experience this, but a lot of people with schizophrenia have this, and these mice do as well."

In the mice brains, the prefrontal cortex, which is a key brain region for handling mental processes,

also had reduced levels of dopamine and higher levels of the stress hormone norepinephrine

compared with normal mice.

These molecular changes the researchers saw resulted from elevated levels of a transporter protein

dubbed NET that normally processes dopamine and norepinephrine in the synapse, the space
between neurons. By treating mice with drugs that blocked NET activity, the investigators were able to

restore normal dopamine levels and behaviors.

Clinical trials of NET inhibitors in patients with schizophrenia are already underway. These new

findings help explain why they might work, offering a chance for even better medicines.

Niswender, Galli and their colleagues detailed their findings online June 8 in the journal PLoS Biology.

Reaction

We all know that diabetes is known to be the cause of death not just because of the disease itself but

due to the complication the disease may lead to, we often encounter patient being amputated because

the limb wont be able to revive due to infection, there are also multiple organ failure usually the victim

is our kidneys and our lungs, but recently it shows that there is also a major effect in our brain that

can lead to other mental and neurological disorder, such as Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia,

because insulin also regulates dopamine, the malfunction of production of it could cause the said

disorder.

We should be very much aware of the risk and predisposing factors of diabetes, so that we can

minimize if not prevent the occurrence of the disease, because it is a very dangerous illness that

would require lifetime treatment, though manageable but would surely change your way of life.