In a mouse experiment, overweight people were more anxious than their peers - and more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease
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Loading... - Anna Dorko
- 21 Jul 2022
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Obesity is linked to Alzheimer's disease and other diseases that impair brain function.
More proof of the connection has now been obtained through mouse experiments.
Mice were fed fatty food with a lot of energy for 30 weeks. Next, the health of the mice was compared to a group of animals that received a healthy diet.
Mice that ate fatty food gained weight and developed insulin resistance. It is a condition where the tissue's ability to respond to insulin is reduced, and insulin levels in the blood are elevated.
The group that received the fatty food behaved more anxiously compared to the mice that received a healthy diet.
In addition, the so-called tau protein, which is found in patients with Alzheimer's disease, accumulated more than normal in the brains of the mice.
In Alzheimer's disease, two proteins important for brain function, beta-amyloid and tau, change.
Beta-amyloid, which is important for communication, folds incorrectly and accumulates as plaques in the tissue. The structural protein tau, on the other hand, becomes tangled.
The experiment also included a group of transgenic mice, which had a susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease due to the mutation. For them, the fatty diet caused even more harmful changes.
The cognitive abilities of the transgenic mice were already impaired, and they gained more weight than the other groups. This was due to poor metabolism caused by brain changes.
In addition, their blood sugar increased and insulin resistance increased.
The mice showed behavior suggestive of anxiety and depression. In addition, the concentrations of the tau protein in their brains were even higher than the other groups.
"Obesity and diabetes weaken the central nervous system. This exacerbates mental health disorders and cognitive impairment. We proved this with mouse experiments," says assistant professor Larisa Bobrovskaya , who was involved in the study, in the press release .
The connection between obesity and Alzheimer's disease has also been observed in humans.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain has shown that obesity causes changes in certain brain areas and in the blood flow of the brain. These changes suggest that the susceptibility of the brain tissue to damage has increased.
The connection was studied at the University of Eastern Finland.
"Obesity already in middle age can adversely affect later brain health. The brain changes that lead to Alzheimer's disease and other memory disorders begin already years before the disease manifests itself, so it's worth paying attention to weight control in time," emeritus professor Hilkka Soininen said in a press release .
In the same study, it was concluded that subjects already suffering from Alzheimer's disease benefited if their weight stayed within the upper limits of normal weight.
ALZHEIMER'S disease is a progressive and brain-degenerating memory disease, the risk of which increases strongly with age. Its root cause is still a mystery to researchers.
Overweight, lack of exercise, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol increase the probability of the disease. Read More...
