2022 Volume 8 Pages 29-33
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurological disease that leads to dementia and ultimately death due to cognitive decline caused by the loss of neurons in the brain. It has been reported that type 2 diabetes increases the risk of developing AD dementia, although the molecular mechanism linking type 2 diabetes and AD is unknown. The high incidence of AD in patients with type 2 diabetes may be explained by the effect of diabetes on tau pathology, one of the cardinal neuropathological features of the AD brain. Clinical studies using biofluid biomarkers report that tau in cerebrospinal fluid is increased by diabetic conditions; however, studies using post-mortem brain and positron emission tomography imaging provided controversial results regarding the effect of type 2 diabetes on tau pathology. In animal models, the effects of type 2 diabetes on tau have been extensively examined at the molecular level. The effect of type 2 diabetes increases phosphorylated tau in the brain via multiple intracellular signaling pathways. Therefore, tau phosphorylation may underlie the pathological interplay between diabetes and AD. A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms linking these two diseases may provide novel insights into diagnostic and therapeutic developments for AD.
