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U.S. researchers suggest a new explanation for the neurologic and cerebral complications — cognitive dysfunction, depression — that come with diabetes.
BOSTON, Dec. 3 (UPI) — U.S. researchers suggest a new explanation for the neurologic and cerebral complications — cognitive dysfunction, depression — that come with diabetes.
C. Ronald Kahn of Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and colleagues suggest the brain of a person with diabetes may make less cholesterol than it needs to function normally. Cholesterol in cell membranes aids in how one neuron can communicate with another neuron, Kahn said.
The researchers find this critical cholesterol synthesis in the brain unraveling in mice with diabetes.
“People with diabetes can have a lot of problems with brain function, especially if it is uncontrolled,” Kahn said in a statement. “The assumption had been that this was related to the effects of poor glucose control. Our findings suggest a completely new concept.”
The findings include not only expected changes in appetite and feeding genes but also in genes involved in cholesterol synthesis.
“The changes were not large, but they were in many genes in the pathway and they were all in the same direction,” Kahn said.
Further study shows a reduction in a gene — SREBP-2 — a master controller of cholesterol metabolism. That change reduces cholesterol production in the brain. The cholesterol in these cell membranes turns over rapidly, Kahn said, and effects could be seen in animals with uncontrolled diabetes after just a week or two. However, cholesterol synthesis was restored when the animals were injected with insulin.
“This is another reason to think that keeping good control over blood sugar might make a difference,” Kahn said.
The findings raise the prospect that cholesterol-lowering statins might have unintended consequences for the brain and cognition. Earlier research designed to look for the potential effect of statins on cognitive function have yielded conflicting results, so more research is needed, Kahn noted.
The findings are published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
