Urea in the brain causes dementia

 The build-up of urea in the brain to toxic levels can cause brain damage - and eventually dementia. Metabolic linkages between Huntington's, other neurodegenerative diseases and type-2 diabetes. Huntington's Disease - one of seven major types of age-related dementia - is directly linked to brain urea levels and metabolic processes. Urea is similarly linked to Alzheimer's disease.

The Huntington's study also showed that the high urea levels occurred before dementia sets in, which could help doctors to one day diagnose and even treat dementia, well in advance of its onset. Urea and ammonia in the brain are metabolic breakdown products of protein. Urea is more commonly known as a compound which is excreted from the body in urine. If urea and ammonia build up in the body because the kidneys are unable to eliminate them, for example, serious symptoms can result.

Alzheimer's and Huntington's are at opposite ends of the dementia spectrum. Dementia results in a progressive and irreversible loss of nerve cells and brain functioning, causing loss of memory and cognitive impairments affecting the ability to learn. Currently, there is no cure.

The team used human brains, donated by families for medical research, using cutting-edge gas chromatography mass spectrometry to measure brain urea levels. For levels to be toxic urea must rise 4-fold or higher than in the normal brain. Treating this metabolic state in the brain may help in the regeneration of tissue that can reverse dementia.
          haleplushearty.blogspot.com

Low calorie diet can reverse type 2 diabetes

Diabetes goes into remission in many patients who undergo bariatric weight-loss surgery, which significantly restricts caloric intake prior to clinically significant weight loss.The research team investigated the effects of a very low calorie diet VLCD, consisting of one-quarter the normal intake, on a rodent model of type 2 diabetes.

Using a novel stable (naturally occurring) isotope approach, which they developed, the researchers tracked and calculated a number of metabolic processes that contribute to the increased glucose production by the liver. The method, known as PINTA, allowed the investigators to perform a comprehensive set of analyses of key metabolic fluxes within the liver that might contribute to insulin resistance and increased rates of glucose production by the liver-two key processes that cause increased blood-sugar concentrations in diabetes.

Using this approach, the researchers pinpointed three major mechanisms responsible for the VLCD's dramatic effect of rapidly lowering blood glucose concentrations in the diabetic animals. In the liver, the VLCD lowers glucose production by: decreasing the conversion of lactate and amino acids into glucose; decreasing the rate of liver glycogen conversion to glucose; and decreasing fat content, which in turn improves the liver's response to insulin.

These positive effects of the VLCD were observed in three days. Using this approach to comprehensively interrogate liver carbohydrate and fat metabolism, we showed that it is a combination of three mechanisms that is responsible for the rapid reversal of hyperglycemia following a very low calorie diet.
           haleplushearty.blogspot.com