Alzheimer’s disease linked to hunger hormone: study

A person’s risk of contracting Alzheimer’s may be linked to levels of the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin, according to a US study published Wednesday which could point the way toward future treatment of the disease.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that scientists in the northeastern state of Massachusetts have found that high levels of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite, appears to be related to a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

“These findings are consistent with recent experimental data indicating the leptin improves memory function in animals… and strengthens the evidence that leptin is a hormone with a broad set of actions in the central nervous system,” wrote the authors of the study, researchers with the Framingham Heart Study, a 60-year-old research project under the direction of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Produced by the body’s fat cells, leptin sends a signal to the brain after a meal that a person has had enough to eat, thereby reducing the urge to eat.

The study measured leptin level in several hundred elderly people without dementia, with particular focus paid to a sub-group of about 200 test subjects who underwent more rigorous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

The research, conducted over 12 years, found that subjects with the lowest levels of leptin were more likely to develop the neurological disease than those with the highest.

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