ot: Sugar promotes Alzheimer's-like disease in mice

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Sugar promotes Alzheimer's-like disease in mice

Last Updated: 2007-12-17 15:06:22 -0400 (Reuters Health)

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2007/12/17/eline/links/20071217elin001.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eating too much sugar could be bad for your

brain as well as your teeth, the results of a new study with mice suggests.

Mice bred to develop an Alzheimer's-like disease that were given

sugar-sweetened water had a greater decline in learning skills and

memory compared with mice that drank pure water, Dr. Dongfeng Cao and

colleagues from the University of Alabama at Birmingham found. What's

more, the animals that consumed sugar had a greater degree of

Alzheimer's-like damage to their brains.

" Our findings are of tremendous importance given that the consumption of

sugar-sweetened beverages has increased dramatically over the past

decades and will most likely remain high in modern societies, " Cao and

his team said.

Several recent studies have found that people with type 2 diabetes are

at increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, the researchers

point out in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. But it has not been

clear how diabetes could influence Alzheimer's disease development.

To look at the effects of a high-sugar diet, the researchers compared

mice given water containing 10 percent sucrose with mice that drank

plain water. Sucrose is common table sugar.

After 25 weeks, the animals given sweetened water weighed 17 percent

more than the control mice. While the sucrose-drinking mice ate less

food than those given plain water, the amount of sucrose they consumed

pushed their calorie consumption 15 percent higher; they obtained 43

percent of their total calories from sucrose. These mice also developed

early signs of diabetes and had excessive amounts of fat in their blood.

In behavioral tests, the mice given sweetened water also showed

significant impairments in learning and memory compared to those given

pure water.

The brains of the sucrose-fed animals had 3-times the amount of the

Alzheimer's-associated protein amyloid-beta, and roughly 2.5-times as

much apolipoprotein-E, a protein that, in mice, promotes the formation

of the " plaques " and " tangles " in brain tissue that are the hallmark of

the disease.

The amount of sucrose the mice consumed was equivalent to a human

drinking five 12-ounce cans of sugar-sweetened soda a day, Cao and

colleagues noted. But it's possible people wouldn't have to consume this

much sucrose for similar brain changes to develop, they add, given that

the soda was the only sucrose source in the animals' diet and that mice

have a metabolic rate that is 7-times higher than humans'.

Based on these findings, the researchers conclude: " Controlling the

consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages may be an effective way to

curtail the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. "

SOURCE: Journal of Biological Chemistry, December 14, 2007.

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