Protecting the brain from detrimental effects linked to diabetes and high blood sugar - Medical News Today

The research group led by Prof. Daphne Atlas, of the Department of Biological Chemistry in the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University, experimented with diabetic rats to examine the mechanism of action that may be responsible for changes in the brain due to high sugar levels. The researchers found that diabetic rats displayed high activity of enzymes called MAPK kinases, which are involved in facilitating cellular responses to a variety of stimuli, leading to inflammatory activity in brain cells and the early death of cells.
The study shows that the diabetic rats given a daily injection of the sugar-lowering drug rosiglitazone for a month enjoyed a significant decrease in MAPK enzyme activity accompanied by a decrease in the inflammatory processes in the brain. According to the authors, this finding represents the first unequivocal evidence of a functional link between high blood sugar and the activation of this specific
inflammatory pathway in the brain.

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