Alzheimer’s disease is often broadly referred to as “Type 3 diabetes,” because it’s thought that glucose processing goes haywire in the neurodegenerative disease, just as it does in diabetes.
A new National Institutes of Health study adds some credence to that theory, finding that glitches in the way the brain breaks down glucose — a process called glycolysis — seem to correspond with more severe symptoms in patients with Alzheimer’s.
“The main takeaway is that we seem to have identified a specific biochemical defect in the way the brain handles glucose in Alzheimer’s disease,” said lead investigator Dr. Madhav Thambisetty, chief of translational neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging. “More excitingly, it suggests that we can try and develop interventions that specifically target these errors in glycolysis.”
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