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For patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), studies have shown that insulin can improve cognition. However, in humans these benefits are less impressive in women and in patients with certain biomarkers. To determine how insulin has this beneficial effect, researchers carried out experiments in a male mouse model of AD.
The researchers found th
at intranasal insulin was absorbed rapidly into the brain of the AD mice and improved learning and memory. Absorption was affected differently when various cellular inhibitors were administered at the same time as the insulin. But importantly, there was little absorption into the bloodstream outside the brain.
“The results presented here provide [a] framework for enhancing intranasal administration so that it could potentially treat [an] increased number of patients with AD, including fem
ales,” the authors conclude in the
Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
(2015;47:715–728)
[1]
.
