Dementia and diabetes: Dr Christian Holscher is part of a UK team at Ulster University and Dundee University looking at ways in which insulin may be able to stop brain cells being damaged in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

　　TODAY, there are 700,000 people with dementia in the UK of which about 65 per cent have Alzheimer’s disease. And the number of people with dementia is projected to double within a generation.

　　Now, biomedical researchers at the University of Ulster are powering a project to examine the role of insulin in the disease, in a bid to find a way to stop Alzheimer’s from damaging brain cells.

　　The year-long pilot project - funded by a UK charity, the Alzheimer’s Research Trust - will be carried out by researchers at Ulster University, Northern Ireland, led by Dr Christian Holscher, and scientists from the University of Dundee, Scotland, led by Dr Calum Sutherland.

　　Their collaboration aims to find out more about the abnormal changes in insulin signalling that occur in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s, and to see if a protein called GLP1 - being investigated as a new treatment for diabetes - can return insulin signalling in the brain to normal and reverse some of the early cellular changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

　　Dr Holscher and Dr Sutherland began their collaboration after meeting at the Alzheimer’s Research Trust’s annual conference and both will bring vital expertise to the new investigation.

　　Dr Sutherland’s laboratory has unique reagents and experience in the study of signalling within brain cells, while the Holscher laboratory is the leading authority on the Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) protein and has established an animal model to study this protein’s effect on the progression of Alzheimer’s.

　　By pooling their efforts to look at a model of Alzheimer’s disease in Coleraine, Northern Ireland - using molecular analysis in Dundee - the team aims to find out if molecular insulin signalling is abnormal after the disease’s characteristic brain plaques have formed. They hope to discover if treatment with GLP1 can prevent or reverse some of the damage associated with Alzheimer’s.

　　Harriet Millward, deputy chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said it was vital to understand more about the link between dementia and diabetes because both diseases are rising at a rapid rate.

　　More than two million people in the UK have diabetes, which puts them at increased risk of developing dementia, and 700,000 people already have dementia, a number forecast to double within a generation.

　　Ms Millward said: “We are very excited about this new study. People with diabetes are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s but nobody really knows why. Indeed, Alzheimer’s has even been called type-3 diabetes.

　　“We desperately need to find out more about the links between these two conditions in the hope that we can find simple lifestyle changes to help people lower their risk of developing dementia as well as long-term drug treatments for people whose lives are already blighted by the condition,” she added.

　　Alzheimer’s disease is not a normal, unavoidable part of getting older, but a fatal and incurable brain disease.

　　There are 16,000 people with dementia in Northern Ireland, a figure projected to increase to 20,500 by 2017 and to rise to more than 47,000 by 2051. There are 56,000 people with dementia in Scotland.

　　Caring for people with Alzheimer’s costs the UK more than cancer, heart disease and stroke combined.

　　The Alzheimer’s Research Trust provides free information to the public on the disease and the treatments available (Tel: +44 1223 843899 or visit: www.alzheimers-research.org.uk).

　　(Source: British Consulate-General in Chongqing)