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Type 2 diabetes drug associated with 35% lower risk of dementia, study finds
- chiefalchemist 2y agoThe smarter way to look at it: Diabetes increases the chances of dementia. It's diabetes that's causing an unnatural increase. Rhe drug is simply a catalyst for something closer to normal. Obesity at it's current rate, while socially normalized, is from an evolutionary standpoint abnormal.
- vessenes 2y agoThe article mentions that this effect was seen in only the cohort taking one of two prevalent diabetes medications. For your interpretation to be accurate, you’d need to also show that the other popular medicine doesn’t work for diabetes type 2 treatment. FWIW, the last line of the article is a dismissal from a UK doctor saying that this would make the diabetes drug better than any existing Alzheimer treatments, and suggesting that there’s a confounding variable in the study instead.
- yieldcrv 2y agoor the Alzheimer’s treatments aren’t treating sugar buildup as amyloid plaques, and instead are trying to manage Alzheimer symptoms But I don't know though
- rob_c 2y agoI thought there had been enough discussion recently about how the plaque isn't the trigger of but probably just another effect?
- yieldcrv 2y agoI had read that too, but while those Alzheimer’s teams pivot over the next 10 years for their new research and drug approvals, the thing that treats insulin and glucose processing helps prevent diabetes and dementia
- giantg2 2y ago"For your interpretation to be accurate, you’d need to also show that the other popular medicine doesn’t work for diabetes type 2 treatment." This is not true. It's possible that there are multiple effects of type 2 diabetes, with multiple drugs that treat the main factor (sugar levels), but with a subset of the drugs affecting other factors (hormones, cellular activities, something else) that influence dementia.
- madmads 2y agoThe smarter way to comment online: Read the article before commenting on how to best understand it. As the other reader mentioned, that's not what the article says.
- chiefalchemist 2y agoSo be complicit in the article's false paradigm? That is, the medication doesn't improve anything per se. The problem is obesity and diabetes. The medication does not perform better than these not being present at all. The presume diabetes - sans T1 - is a norm is false if not dangerous. In other words, "Sure just throw more meds at it" is not a narrative anyone should be comfortable with.
- nabla9 2y agoLook up "confounding variable" and think again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding What you describe is not smarter way. It's jumping to conclusions.
- chiefalchemist 2y agoNo actually, I'm not. Instead, my baseline is the historic norm, the evolutionary norm. I don't jump to the conclusion of normalizing diabetes and then come up with some throw-more-pills-at-it theory. In other words, how effective is this "cure" vs no diabetes at all? *That* is the question.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoFrom an evolutionary standpoint, animals cycle from obese to slim year round. Obesity is normal in autumn. Being slim is normal in spring/early summer. Food state wise we are in a eternal autumn.
- chmod775 2y agoThere's no "normal" obesity or time when obesity is normal. The disease is characterized by an abnormal weight by definition. An animal who has a normal weight for one of its species at some time of year is not obese.
- lostapathy 2y agoBears that go into winter slim aren’t bears at all come spring.
- lm28469 2y agoYeah because bears totally have the same lifestyle and hibernation patterns has humans...
- CRConrad 2y agoOf course we don't, but then again I think bears were just thrown in as an (extreme) example. As I read the thread before that, the point was that most animals' weights vary on an annual cycle, fattened up during summer-autumn and slimmer after the winter. Which seems fairly uncontroversial to me.
- bequanna 2y agoHumans are not bears. Also, the life expectancy of humans is >10x a bear. Why are people bending over backwards to normalize diabetes and obesity? The weeds in a garden need to be pulled or they will take the garden. Problems need to be recognized and then fixed, anything else is delusion.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoArticle: - SGLT-2 inhibitors: canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, sotagliflozin, bexagliflozin - DPP-4 inhibitors: sitagliptin, saxagliptin, linagliptin Other beneficial drugs beyond/with/for diabetes and/or weight: - Metformin - AGIs: acarbose - GLP-1 agonists: tirzepatide, semaglutide, liraglutide - DACRAs: cagrilintide Maybe in the future it will be possible to manage a person's glucose and related hormone levels in roughly a continuous keto or borderline low blood sugar state using the equivalent of an "insulin pump" and a real-time blood glucose monitor control system such that it doesn't promote low-blood sugar neurological symptoms.
- code_duck 2y agoThat’s already the concept of insulin pumps. The problem currently is that subcutaneous insulin takes too long to work to be very precise, and also, pumps don’t have a concept of carb intake. They try to predict whether automatic doses are need based on trends. Also, typical blood glucose for a non-diabetic person is 85 mg/dL. This is fairly close to the line of hypoglycemia, which is under 70, so automated pumps aim to keep glucose somewhat higher. For the Tandem T:Slim, it attempts to maintain 110, for instance. I am not familiar with most of the drugs listed there but I suspect their action would be far too slow to work very well in that regard.
- hungie 2y agoCould we, for instance, develop a glucose fuel cell that turns the excess glucose into electricity or heat to remove it? I could imagine that being responsive, and toggleable.
- falcor84 2y agoIt would be really cool if I could use my excess carbs to charge my phone.
- code_duck 2y agoWe could, I guess, with some biochemical wizardy. Insulin does more than just reduce blood glucose, though. It allows the glucose to enter muscle and brain cells to be used for energy. People with Type 1 need just as many carbs and as much energy as other people, of course, it's just that their body can't use it properly. Insulin does have the drawback of being a fat storage hormone though. Such a device sure would be great for people who indulge in too many carbs!
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- rawicki 2y agoDPP-4 drugs are less effective also on other metrics. Would be far more interesting to see the comparison of SGLT-2 inhibitors vs GLP-1 agonists. For some reason GLP-1 drugs are not that popular in Korea (and still not prescribed just for the weight loss), so that may explain why these researchers haven't done that.
- tsoukase 2y agoDiabetes is a debilitating situation. A slow killer. It is an independent factor for both degenerative (Alzheimer's) and vascular dementia. I do not think any drug will be better than the disease itself. On the other side, if we use a diabetes drug to cure dementia in non-diabetes patients, we might have a good result but with hypoglycemia as a side effect.
- jjallen 2y agoFor non-diabetics this is fairly easy to prevent (at least it is for me). You just eat a moderate amount of food before taking it (referring to metformin).
- zug_zug 2y agoIn people with diabetes.
- tracker1 2y agoConsidering that Alzheimers itself is considered type 3 diabetes and Dementia is heavily correlated, it isn't that surprising. My own PoV is that a lot of it comes down to the massive increase in heavily refined foods and seed oils in the past century and a half. You have a lot of carbs and a really different mix of fatty and amino acids. So higher blood glucose, more of the time combined with a very different mix of fatty and even amino acids in the diet. Likely exacerbated by half a century of low-fat, low cholesterol diets perpetuated largely in busted myth. Combine this with hyper-palatability and it's just hard to get away from. Heart disease, alzheimer's, dementia, diabetes, obesity... All of it comes down to food and exercise. With a bit more exposure from RFKjr, it's ironic that Time magazine is now doubling down for the conglomerates, can't find the cover photo for this, but the recent article on why ultra-processed foods aren't that bad is astounding.
- kranke155 2y agothey made an article on ultra processed foods being ok for you?? Nuts.
- mgarfias 2y agoMom has the dementia and I have t2d. I started looking and discovered one of the meds I’m on already is one of these sglt-2 deals. So yay!