Diabetes drugs help prevent Alzheimer's Disease

Several different ketogenic interventions including prolonged fasting, a very high fat ketogenic diet containing no MCT, or a regular diet to which MCT or ketone esters all have a broadly similar neurological/cognitive benefit (Table 6). The cognitive benefit of ketones is observed under different conditions including in the presence of chronically impaired brain glucose availability or utilization due to disease (i.e., MCI or AD), or when the brain glucose deficit is acute, i.e., severe hypoglycemia experimentally induced by insulin infusion and starvation (Owen et al., 1967). The wide range of ketogenic conditions that protect cognition suggests that ketones themselves (rather than MCFAs) are central to their beneficial effect but this needs to be confirmed along with determining the actual mechanism. At present, a keto-neurotherapeutic approach is a safe and scientifically well-supported strategy to bypass deteriorating brain energy metabolism arising during aging; time will tell whether it is truly clinically effective to limit the onset or progression of cognitive decline in AD.

Click to expand...