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(Best Syndication News) Research indicates that there is a link between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, especially if the onset of diabetes occurs in middle age. Twin studies performed in Sweden indicate that participants who got diabetes before the age of 65 had a 125 percent increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s Disease and Diabetes

The association between the two diseases was less pronounced if the participant became diabetic after the age of 65. The researchers controlled for various risk factors including heredity and poverty which can contribute to both diseases. They believe that the risk may be greater in real life than what was discovered in the study. Insulin appears to shield the brain from toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease, so a healthy lifestyle may help prevent Alzheimer’s.

In a Best Syndication article dated December 4th 2005, we described a study that connected diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Research conducted at the Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School found that “insulin receptors dropped off significantly in the brain even in the early stages of the disease.” The scientists believed that Alzheimer’s may be a third type of diabetes.

Weili Xu of the Karolinska Institute was the lead author of the study. The research was published in the January 2009 journal Diabetes (“Mid- and Late-Life Diabetes in Relation to the Risk of Dementia”)

Mental Illness and Violence

Researchers in the United States found that mental illness alone is not associated with an increased potential for violence, but when combined with substance abuse, the risk is elevated. “Our study shows that a link between mental illness and violence does exist, but it’s not as strong as most people think,” said Eric B. Elbogen, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor in the forensic psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Other factors, including a history of past violence or substance abuse or a recent divorce or loss of job, are associated with an increased propensity for violence. “Only when a person has both mental illness and substance abuse at the same time does that person’s risk of future violence outweigh anyone else’s,” Elbogen adds.

This research was published in the February 2009 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

By Jeffrey Workman

Comparison of a normal aged brain (left) and an Alzheimer's patient's brain (right). Differential characteristics are pointed.