_______________________________________________________
As published recently in the Archives of Neurology, Alzheimer's subjects who nasally inhaled insulin performed better on memory tests than subjects who inhaled a placebo spray. For the most part, I think the general press has reported this quite responsibly, without premature claims of imminent new treatment options on the horizon. Much to the contrary, they might be under-selling the potential for such a breakthrough.
A possible relationship between insulin therapy and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been appreciated for some time. Researchers established that diabetes is an important risk factor for AD and have also determined that insulin plays a role in the brain during cell repair and new cell formation. However, the therapeutic potential for insulin has been hindered by the challenge of getting it into the brain, without introducing it to the rest of the body through the blood.
To be specific, the delivery barrier has been one of controlling where the insulin goes once introduced into the body, given that high doses of insulin would need to be introduced into the blood in order for any significant amount to travel to the brain. Such an approach would have obvious impact on blood-sugar levels and would quite possibly disrupt other normal biological processes.
As such, a key finding in this research is that nasal injection may deliver significant amounts of insulin to the brain without introducing it to the bloodstream in undesired quantities. Sounds very promising.
Posts
