Alzheimer’s may disrupt metabolism’s connection to sleep

Sudden blood sugar swings can disrupt sleep, the relationship of food to sleep becomes even more confusing when there are signs of Alzheimer’s disease, a mouse study suggests.

The results show that Alzheimer’s disease is not limited to the brain. Neuroscientists devised a way to simultaneously measure the amount of sugar the brain consumes, the rate of nerve cell activity, and how long the mice spend asleep. The blood glucose injections caused changes in the brain: a burst of metabolism, an increase in nerve cell activity, and more time awake. But a drop in blood sugar, caused by the insulin injections, also led to increased nerve cell action and more wakefulness.

The researchers performed similar analyzes on mice genetically engineered to have one of two key signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Some of these mice had clumps of beta-amyloid protein between nerve cells, while others had tangles of a protein called tau within nerve cells. Both groups of mice had abnormal reactions to high or low blood sugar. But those reactions depended on whether their brains had beta-amyloid or tau; In mice with amyloid plaques, higher blood sugar led to a slight increase in brain metabolism, but not as much as in a normal mouse. However, in mice with high tau, high blood sugar did not increase brain metabolism, in both cases, nerve cell activity no longer had large responses to blood sugar.

Neurologists and neuroscientists discovered that sleep begins to suffer in people with Alzheimer’s disease before other symptoms appear. These results suggest that the sleep centers, wake centers, and other parts of the brain are being damaged by Alzheimer’s disease.

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