Central insulin resistance as a trigger for sporadic Alzheimer-like pathology: An experimental approach

Abstract

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 β (Aβ) 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 STZicv rat model and are associated with tau protein hyperphosphorylation and Aβ-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 Aβ pathology in sAD. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.