Alzheimer’s Disease is a particularly vicious illness, with currently no preventative or curative treatment available. This paper focuses on how impairments in glucose metabolism and insulin signaling contribute to the disease process and further, on potential treatment options that target these specific dysfunctional processes in hopes of finding an effective cure or prevention therapy. Glucose hypometabolism presents years prior to the clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease and promotes the accumulation of Aβ, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction. Additionally, a downregulation of GLUTs, particularly GLUT1 and GLUT3 also serves to decrease neural glucose uptake as well as to escalate glucose hypometabolism. Moreover, insulin resistance promotes tau hyperphosphorylation and extracellular aggregation of Aβ42, contributing to the Alzheimer’s Disease pathology. Due to the central role of insulin and glucose neural dysfunction to Alzheimer’s Disease, these processes pose as strong potential targets for much needed Alzheimer’s Disease curative and preventative therapy. Specifically, antioxidants and antidiabetics such as Metformin, thiazolidinediones, sulfonylureas, incretins, and intranasal insulin have shown some potential as future treatment options for Alzheimer’s Disease but require further investigation. Some non-pharmacological approaches, such as the ketogenic diet, have also been proposed as viable treatment options and work via their effects on glucose and insulin pathways. Dysfunctional glucose metabolism and insulin resistance are incredibly important in the progression of the Alzheimer’s Disease stages and as such, present as viable potential targets of future drug therapies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43882 |
| Date | 13 February 2022 |
| Creators | Safransky, Michelle |
| Contributors | Trinkaus-Randall, Vickery, Offner, Gwynneth D. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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