"Are Alzheimer's and diabetes the same disease?" (and high fructose corn syrup does a cameo)

If the connection holds up someone may be on the hook for trillions.
From New Scientist:

The link between obesity and dementia is becoming hard to deny

HAVING type 2 diabetes may mean you are already on the path to Alzheimer's. This startling claim comes from a study linking the two diseases more intimately than ever before. There is some good news: the same research also offers a way to reverse memory problems associated with diabetes – albeit in rats – which may hint at a new treatment for Alzheimer's.

"Perhaps you should use Alzheimer's drugs at the diabetes stage to prevent cognitive impairment in the first place," says Ewan McNay from the University at Albany in New York.

Alzheimer's cost the US $130 billion in 2011 alone. One of the biggest risk factors is having type 2 diabetes. This kind of diabetes occurs when liver, muscle and fat cells stop responding efficiently to insulin, the hormone that tells them to absorb glucose from the blood. The illness is usually triggered by eating too many sugary and high-fat foods that cause insulin to spike, desensitising cells to its presence. As well as causing obesity, insulin resistance can also lead to cognitive problems such as memory loss and confusion.

In 2005, a study by Susanne de la Monte's group at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, identified a reason why people with type 2 diabetes had a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's. In this kind of dementia, the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, seemed to be insensitive to insulin. Not only could your liver, muscle and fat cells be "diabetic" but so it seemed, could your brain.

Feeding animals a diet designed to give them type 2 diabetes leaves their brains riddled with insoluble plaques of a protein called beta-amyloid – one of the calling cards of Alzheimer's. We also know that insulin plays a key role in memory. Taken together, the findings suggest that Alzheimer's might be caused by a type of brain diabetes.

If that is the case, the memory problems that often accompany type 2 diabetes may in fact be early-stage Alzheimer's rather than mere cognitive decline.

Editorial: "If diabetes causes Alzheimer's, we can beat it" 

Although there is no definitive consensus on the exact causes of Alzheimer's, we do know that brains get clogged with beta-amyloid plaques. One idea gaining ground is that it is not the plaques themselves that cause the symptoms, but their precursors – small, soluble clumps of beta-amyloid called oligomers. The insoluble plaques could actually be the brain's way of trying to isolate the toxic oligomers....MUCH MORE

And the HFCS connection from the Dec. 2, 2012 Medical News Today:

High Fructose Corn Syrup Fuelling Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic

A new study suggests countries that use large amounts of high fructose corn syrup in their food may be helping to fuel the global epidemic of type 2 diabetes. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Southern California (USC) found a 20% higher proportion of the population have diabetes in countries with high use of the food sweetener compared to countries that do not use it.

The findings, published online first in the journal Global Public Health on 27 November, also reveal that the link between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and the "significantly increased prevalence of diabetes" is independent of the total use of sugar and levels of obesity.

Co-author Stanley Ulijaszek, Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, says in a statement their analysis shows "an ecological relationship that suggests there are potential risks in consuming high levels of high-fructose corn syrup".

Sucrose and HFCS

Ordinary table sugar is made of sucrose, which comes from sugar cane or sugar beets. Sucrose contains equal amounts of fructose and glucose, but HFCS has more fructose. This makes HFCS much sweeter, which helps stabilize processed foods.

Food companies also use HFCS to improve the appearance of certain processed foods such as baked goods because it produces a more consistent browning.

Ulijaszek says:

"Many people regard fructose as a healthy natural sugar from fruit, and that's true. Natural fructose found in fruit for example, is fine: the 10 g or so of fructose in an apple is probably released slowly because of the fibre within the apple and because the fructose is inside the cells of the apple."

But, he goes on to explain, "there is evidence that the body struggles to metabolize large amounts of fructose that does not come from fruit, and there is a risk for type 2 diabetes", because "fructose and sucrose are not metabolically equivalent".

US Has the Highest Consumption of HFCS
For their study, Ulijaszek and colleagues analyzed data on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) availability in 42 countries and find that 8% of people in countries with a higher use of the food sweetener have type 2 diabetes compared with only 6.7% in countries that do not use it.

At 25 kg or 55 lbs of of HFCS per year, the US has the highest consumption of HFCS per head, followed by Hungary at 16 kg or 46 lbs per head....MORE