Nasal insulin spray may stop the onset of Alzheimer’s in the elderly

using nasal spray insulin may delay its emergence. Alzheimer’s and other age-related dementias in people with and without type 2 diabetes. Data are from a study conducted by the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) hospital in the United States, published April 28 in the Journal of Neurology.

Intranasal insulin use in patients with type 2 diabetes improved walking speed and cerebral blood flow, as well as lowering blood insulin. In the participants who did not have the disease or had a condition called prediabetes, the researchers noted improvements in verbal memory and decision-making ability.

“Walking speed is an important clinical indicator of well-being in the elderly, which is associated with cognitive decline, hospitalizations, disability, and death. At baseline, participants with diabetes walked slower and had poorer cognition than participants without diabetes, which served as a clinical benchmark for the normally aging population by the hospital.

The study was conducted with 223 participants aged 50 to 85, regardless of whether they had diabetes or not. Next, the researchers treated the patients with intranasal insulin and after 24 weeks evaluated their walking speed, attention, mood, executive function, and memory – some participants were also given a placebo intranasally to compare results.

The purpose of intranasal insulin is to send the hormone directly to the brain, but the spray cannot replace common insulin in diabetic patients. In fact, scientists noticed greater improvements were found in patients who started treatment in the pre-diabetes period.

It is known that a lack of insulin production may be responsible for a higher risk of Alzheimer’s in people with pre-diabetes or diabetes, and that insulin acts on the brain. In previous studies, insulin administered to the brain has already shown its potential to treat cognitive decline in older people.

The strategy of using intranasal insulin deserves more attention and should be studied in larger studies to confirm its beneficial effects, according to Long Ngo, a professor at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study.

According to the data of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), approximately 537 million people worldwide live with diabetes. In Brazil, estimates indicate that the number of people with diabetes could exceed 16 million.

ARTICLE Journal of Neurology: doi.org/10.1007/s00415-022-11119-6