Breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatment hinges on diabetes drugs: study

There may actually be a benefit to having diabetes.

Taking high-blood-sugar medication could possibly ease the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Mount Sinai study published Thursday in PLOS One online.

“Our data indicate that the medication does reduce the plaques and tangles that are associated with Alzheimer’s,” the study’s senior author, Vahram Haroutunian, tells The Post.

In earlier studies, Mount Sinai researchers determined the brains of people with both Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes had fewer lesions compared with those without diabetes.

In the new study, they found it was likely the medication those diabetes patients took, such as metformin, that protected them from the lesions.

Researchers examined the tissue and brain capillaries of 34 people with Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes. They compared them with tissue from 30 brains of people with Alzheimer’s who didn’t have diabetes — plus a control group of 19 brains without Alzheimer’s or diabetes.

Brain tissue from the diabetics had half the markers of Alzheimer’s disease compared with those who didn’t have diabetes.

Scientists believe those markers start to form “years or decades” before symptoms even appear in Alzheimer’s patients, Haroutunian says. It’s the accumulation of the lesions that eventually leads to memory loss. Click here to continue reading.