Central insulin resistance as a trigger for sporadic Alzheimer-like pathology: an experimental approach
Salkovic-Petrisic, M.; Hoyer, S.
Journal of Neural Transmission. Supplementum 2007(72): 217-233
2007
ISSN/ISBN: 0303-6995 PMID: 17982898 Document Number: 609428
A growing body of evidence implicates impairments in brain insulin signaling in early sporadic Alzheimer disease (sAD) pathology. However, the most widely accepted hypothesis for AD aetiology stipulates that pathological aggregations of the amyloid beta (A beta) peptide are the cause of all forms of Alzheimer's disease. Streptozotocin-intracerebroventricularly (STZ-icv) treated rats are proposed as a probable experimental model of sAD. The current work reviews evidence obtained from this model indicating that central STZ administration induces brain pathology and behavioural alterations resembling those in sAD patients. Recently, alterations of the brain insulin system resembling those in sAD have been found in the STZ-icv rat model and are associated with tau protein hyperphosphorylation and A beta-like aggregations in meningeal vessels. In line with these findings the hypothesis has been proposed that insulin resistance in the brain might be the primary event which precedes the A beta pathology in sAD.