For some time, researchers have known that people with diabetes have a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia than those without diabetes, but the exact cause of this link has not been known. Now, a new study by researchers in Cologne, Germany, and at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, to be published this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that insulin resistance in brain cells can affect how they function, causing some of the biochemical changes typically seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
