10 surprising ways diabetes and dementia are connected

 The link between diabetes and dementia is becoming increasingly clear. New research shows how blood sugar problems affect brain health and vice versa. Here are ten evidence-based insights into how the two conditions are related.

1. Diabetes raises the risk of dementia

People with diabetes are about 60% more likely to develop dementia than those without, and frequent episodes of low blood sugar are linked to a 50% higher chance of cognitive decline.

2. Insulin resistance affects the brain too

Insulin resistance – the major cause of type 2 diabetes – happens when cells stop responding properly to insulin. This means that too much sugar, in the form of glucose, is left in the blood, leading to complications.

It usually affects the liver and muscles, but it also affects the brain. In Alzheimer’s, this resistance may make it harder for brain cells to use glucose for energy, contributing to cognitive decline.

3. A brain sugar shortage in dementia

The brain is only 2% of our body weight, but uses about 20% of the body’s energy. In dementia, brain cells appear to lose the ability to use glucose properly.

This mix of poor use of glucose and insulin resistance is sometimes unofficially called type 3 diabetes.

4. Alzheimer’s can raise diabetes risk

People with Alzheimer’s often have higher fasting blood glucose, even if they don’t have diabetes. This is a form of pre-diabetes. Animal studies also show that Alzheimer’s-like changes in the brain raise blood glucose levels.

Also, the highest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, the APOE4 genetic variant, reduces insulin sensitivity by trapping the insulin receptor inside the cell, where it cannot be switched on properly.

5. Blood vessel damage links both conditions

Diabetes damages blood vessels, causing complications in the eyes, kidneys and heart. The brain is also at risk. High or varying blood glucose levels can injure vessels in the brain, reducing blood flow and oxygen delivery.

Diabetes can also weaken the brain’s protective barrier, letting harmful substances in. This leads to inflammation. Reduced blood flow and brain inflammation are strongly linked to dementia.

6. Memantine: a dementia drug born from diabetes research

Memantine, used to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s symptoms, was originally developed as a diabetes medication. It didn’t succeed in controlling blood glucose, but researchers later discovered its benefits for brain function. This story shows how diabetes research may hold clues for treating brain disorders.

7. Metformin might protect the brain

Metformin, the most widely used diabetes drug, does more than just lower blood glucose. It gets in to the brain and may lower brain inflammation.

Some studies suggest that people with diabetes who take metformin are less likely to develop dementia, and those who stop taking it may see their risk increase again.

Trials are testing its effects in people without diabetes.

Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists found an early depression clue hidden in children’s eyes

 A smile. A frown. The facial expressions that capture a child's attention may reveal important clues about their mental health.

New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York, suggests that depression can influence how children respond to emotional faces, including happy and sad expressions. The study also found that these attention patterns differ depending on whether a child has a family history of depression.Researchers at Binghamton University's Mood Disorders Institute focus on understanding how depression develops during childhood and adolescence. They investigate how factors such as family history and emotional experiences contribute to future depression risk. By identifying these patterns early, scientists hope to improve efforts to recognize and prevent depression before it becomes more severe.

"Most of the vulnerabilities that we focus on are still developing during this time period," said Brandon Gibb, director of the Mood Disorders Institute and SUNY distinguished professor of psychology. "You can catch things as they're developing, rather than only studying them once they're already there and pretty stable."

How Depression and Attention Influence Each Other

Earlier research has linked depression to greater attention toward sad facial expressions. However, those effects have generally been small, and researchers have not known whether these attention patterns contribute to depression or result from it.

The new study is the first to examine how depressive symptoms and attention biases may influence one another over time in children.

"The real novel piece is that we looked at these transactional relations," said Kelly Gair, a PhD student at Binghamton and lead author of the paper. "Between attentional biases and depressive symptoms, we looked at the way that they were mutually predicting one another across the time points, which is especially novel and hasn't been done before."

To investigate these relationships, Gair, Gibb, and collaborator Leslie A. Brick from the University of New Mexico followed 242 children and their mothers for two years. Participants returned every six months for assessments.

During each visit, children viewed pairs of faces on a screen. One face displayed a neutral expression, while the other showed an emotional expression (happy, sad, or angry). Eye tracking technology measured which faces attracted the children's attention and how long they focused on them.

Children in the study looked at faces conveying different emotions onscreen, and eye-tracking technology recorded where their attention veered. Photo credit: NimStim Set of Facial Expressions (Tottenham et al., 2009).

Family History Shapes Attention to Emotional Faces

The findings showed that increasing depressive symptoms affected children's attention differently depending on their family background.

Among children whose mothers had a history of major depressive disorder, growing depressive symptoms were associated with increased attention to sad faces.

"For those who are already at risk, the more these children experience depression themselves, the more they lose their ability to pull their attention away from the sad things around them," Gibb said.

Gair noted that depression can have a powerful influence on what people notice in their environment.

"We know that when you're depressed, it changes what you pay attention to," Gair said. "Our results suggest that these changes may be more long-lasting and may differ depending on family history. One thought is that for children of mothers with depression, who are exposed to more facial displays of sadness from interactions with their mom, these types of facial expressions become even more salient when they experience depression themselves, so their attention becomes increasingly stuck on sad expressions."

Different Patterns for Lower-Risk Children

The pattern was different among children whose mothers had no history of depression.

When these children experienced increases in depressive symptoms, they tended to spend less time paying attention to happy faces.

"In our lower-risk children, what seems to be happening is that experiences of depression are eroding a protective factor, which is how much they pay attention to happy faces," Gibb said.

Researchers are now continuing to follow these children as they move into adolescence. The goal is to determine whether these attention patterns contribute to a higher likelihood of developing clinical depression later in life.

Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists found a surprising problem with sugar-free diets

 Giving up sugar entirely may not be as beneficial as many people assume. New research presented Saturday at ENDO 2026, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Chicago, suggests that completely removing sugar from the diet could have unintended effects on gut and metabolic health.

Researchers from the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait examined what happened when mice were fed a low-fat diet that contained no sucrose, a common form of sugar. The study compared those animals with a control group that received a low-fat diet containing sucrose over a 16-week period.

"Completely removing sucrose from a low-fat diet may unexpectedly disrupt gut health and promote inflammation and metabolic dysfunction, highlighting that balanced nutrition is more important than simply eliminating sugar," said Rasheed Ahmad, Ph.D., principal scientist and head of the Immunology & Microbiology Department at the Dasman Diabetes Institute, in Kuwait City, Kuwait. The institute was founded by Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.

Sugar-Free Diet Linked to Metabolic Changes

To evaluate the effects of eliminating sucrose, the researchers measured glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, circulating metabolic hormones, the gut microbiome, and inflammation in both the colon and liver.

Despite maintaining similar body weights, mice on the sucrose-free diet experienced several negative health changes compared with the control group. These included poorer glucose control, insulin resistance, imbalances in gut microbes, intestinal inflammation, and changes associated with fatty liver disease.

"The findings suggest that complete removal of sucrose from a low-fat diet may negatively affect gut microbiota and metabolic health," Ahmad said. "The study highlights the importance of maintaining balanced dietary carbohydrates to support gut and immune homeostasis."

Gut Microbiome and Dietary Balance

According to the researchers, little was previously known about the potential consequences of highly restrictive low-fat diets that eliminate sugar entirely.

"This research may influence future dietary recommendations by emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy gut microbiome rather than focusing only on sugar restriction," Ahmad said. "In the long term, these findings could help improve strategies for preventing and managing metabolic disorders, fatty liver disease and chronic inflammatory conditions."

The team believes the results underscore the need to consider overall dietary balance, rather than concentrating solely on reducing sugar intake.

"Studies such as this reflect our institute's commitment to advancing evidence-based scientific discoveries that improve public health outcomes and deepen our understanding of metabolic disease," said Faisal Hamed Al-Refaei, MD, Acting Director General of Dasman Diabetes Institute.

Source: ScienceDaily

Millipedes beat vertebrates to land by 80 million years

 For hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs appeared and long before vertebrates ventured onto land, millipedes were already thriving on Earth's surface.

These humble decomposers played a key role in some of the planet's earliest terrestrial ecosystems. Yet despite their remarkable history, major questions about their evolution remained unanswered.Now, an international team led by Virginia Tech researchers has filled in one of the final gaps in the millipede family tree, shedding new light on the ancient creatures that helped prepare Earth for life on land.

The study, published in Current Biology, presents the first complete evolutionary history of all living millipede orders. By combining DNA data from modern species with physical evidence preserved in fossils, the researchers traced the origins of millipedes back nearly 460 million years, suggesting they existed long before the oldest millipede fossils discovered so far.

"Millipedes beat vertebrates onto land by more than 80 million years," said Paul Marek, the study's lead investigator and associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Department of Entomology. "They really set the stage for later life on land, including humans and vertebrates."

Solving a Longstanding Millipede Mystery

For more than 100 years, scientists recognized the existence of two rare millipede groups, Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida. However, because fresh specimens were unavailable for DNA analysis, researchers could not determine exactly where these groups belonged on the millipede family tree.

One group consists of millipedes less than a centimeter long that spend their lives underground. The other survives in only a handful of known locations.

"These last two were kind of like our white whales," Marek said.

To find them, researchers traveled to Los Tuxtlas in Mexico and the Canary Islands of Spain. There they collected Siphoniulus neotropicus and Hirudicryptus canariensis, two species whose DNA had never before been included in an evolutionary study.

"It took 10 people over a week just to find this one tiny 10-millimeter adult," said Luisa "Fernanda" Vasquez-Valverde M.S. '21, Ph.D. '24, the paper's first author and an assistant in Marek's lab. "Finding them in the field was hard because we were just seeing this little white nematode. We didn't know for sure it was a millipede until we looked under the microscope."

The team sequenced DNA from the two groups and compared hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species. They also incorporated evidence from 29 fossils. Together, these data allowed the researchers to determine where the mysterious groups fit within millipede evolution and when their lineages first emerged.

The project produced terabytes of genetic data and relied on Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Computing resources to reconstruct evolutionary relationships stretching back hundreds of millions of years.

The results showed that Siphonocryptida is not a separate millipede order as previously thought, but instead belongs within an existing lineage. Siphoniulida, meanwhile, was finally placed alongside its closest evolutionary relatives.

Millipedes on an Ancient Earth

The analysis indicates that millipedes may have originated nearly 460 million years ago, about 35 million years earlier than the oldest known millipede fossils and significantly earlier than previous estimates suggested.

"The biggest surprise was just how ancient some of these lineages turned out to be," Marek said.

At that time, Earth looked very different from today. According to Marek, millipedes were among the early pioneers of life on land, helping recycle nutrients by feeding on decaying organic material in some of the first terrestrial ecosystems.

"There were no vertebrates, no trees, no leaves, no flowering plants, no plants with seeds," Marek said. "Millipedes were feeding on decaying mosses, decomposed slime, and primordial gunk on the surface of the Earth."

The Origins of Millipede Chemical Defenses

The newly completed evolutionary tree also helped researchers pinpoint when one of the group's most notable adaptations appeared.

"They made the first chemical weapons," Marek said. "They're little chemical factories."

The study suggests these chemical defenses originated about 260 million years ago, offering the clearest evidence yet for when millipedes first evolved this capability.

Source: ScienceDaily

A dying star could create a new universe instead of a black hole

 Massive stars produce light and heat through nuclear fusion, a process that releases enormous amounts of energy from their cores. Eventually, however, the largest stars run out of fuel. Once that happens, the outward pressure generated by radiation is no longer strong enough to resist gravity. The star begins collapsing under its own weight, theoretically continuing until all of its mass is compressed into a single point known as a singularity.

Although black holes are widely accepted by physicists, they still raise profound questions. How can a mass equal to billions of Suns be squeezed into an infinitely small point? How can spacetime become infinitely curved at a singularity?

At this extreme limit, the known laws of physics cease to provide reliable answers. Scientists cannot accurately describe what happens under such conditions. Black holes also present another challenge because they hide everything beyond their event horizons. Any matter, radiation, or information that crosses this boundary, including light itself, can no longer be observed.

Gravastars and the Role of Dark Energy

Because of these unresolved issues, some researchers have explored the possibility that at least some objects identified as black holes could actually be something else entirely. One proposed alternative is an ultra compact object known as a gravastar.

Gravastars would be nearly as dense and massive as black holes, making them extremely difficult to detect because of their intense gravitational pull. Unlike black holes, however, they would not contain a singularity or an event horizon. Instead, beneath their outer layers of ordinary matter, they would be filled with dark energy. This mysterious form of energy produces an outward pressure that counteracts gravity and prevents complete collapse.

For many physicists, gravastars offer an appealing alternative because they avoid some of the conceptual problems associated with black holes. Yet one major question has remained unanswered for decades: How could gravastars actually form?

New Solution Suggests a Mini Universe Forms

Theoretical physicists Daniel Jampolski and Professor Luciano Rezzolla have now proposed what they describe as the first dynamic solution to Albert Einstein's equations of General Relativity that explains how a collapsing star could produce a gravastar.

According to their work, the collapse of a massive star may trigger the birth of a miniature universe within the collapsing matter itself. This newly formed universe would not be very different from the Big Bang that gave rise to our own cosmos. As in our universe, dark energy would drive its expansion.

As the mini universe expands, it pushes outward against the inward pull of gravity. This opposing force can halt the collapse before a black hole forms. The result is a stable balance between the collapsing stellar material and the expanding interior universe. That balance creates a gravastar.

The researchers say their solution provides the first explanation for a question scientists have debated for roughly 25 years: how gravastars could emerge from the collapse of ordinary matter.

Room for New Physics

Daniel Jampolski, who developed the solution during his master's thesis under the supervision of Luciano Rezzolla, explains: "The Big Bang of the emerging universe can unfold once the star has already collapsed almost to the point of becoming a black hole."

The behavior of matter compressed to such extraordinary densities remains poorly understood, leaving open the possibility of new physical phenomena. As Jampolski notes: "It is easier to imagine that the Big Bang occurs only at a very late stage, when matter has already been compressed to an extreme degree, thereby giving rise to new effects."

Rezzolla, Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Goethe University, emphasizes that exploring alternatives does not mean rejecting black holes. "Looking for alternatives to black holes should not suggest a skepticism towards black holes, which still represent the most natural and simplest solution to the fate of gravitational collapse. However, as scientists in general, and as theoretical physicists in particular, it is essential to maintain an unbiased approach towards what we do not know and hence explore both the accepted wisdom and the more exotic interpretations. History teaches us that it is not unusual for the latter to become the former."

Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists crack a decades-old CO2 problem and triple fuel production

 Converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into methanol is widely viewed as a promising way to recycle carbon resources. However, scientists have long faced a difficult challenge when trying to improve the process.

At lower temperatures, converting CO2 into methanol is thermodynamically favorable. The problem is that CO2 becomes difficult to activate under these conditions, resulting in weak catalytic performance. Raising the temperature speeds up the reaction, but it also encourages a competing process known as the reverse water-gas shift reaction, which produces unwanted byproducts and lowers methanol selectivity. This persistent trade-off between catalytic activity and selectivity has limited progress in increasing methanol yields.

New Catalyst Design Overcomes Long-Standing Trade-Off

In a study published in Chem, researchers led by Prof. Jian Sun and Prof. Jiafeng Yu of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed a new catalyst design aimed at addressing this challenge.

Their approach uses a strong metal-support interaction (SMSI)-driven overlayer structure to spatially separate active sites within the catalyst. This design allows different reaction steps to occur in different locations, improving the efficiency of methanol production from CO2.By restructuring the catalyst surface and changing how reactants adsorb, dissociate, and move through the reaction pathway, the team achieved a space-time yield of 1.2 g·gcat-1·h-1 at 300 ℃ and 3 MPa. That performance is approximately three times higher than that of conventional commercial Cu/Zn/Al catalysts.

Redirecting CO2 Toward Methanol

The researchers found that their catalyst encourages CO2 to adsorb and activate primarily on zirconia (ZrO2) sites. This steers the reaction toward methanol production through the formate pathway.In conventional Cu-based catalysts, activation typically begins by breaking the C=O bond before hydrogenation occurs. The new strategy follows a different sequence. Hydrogenation takes place first on ZrO2 sites, and C=O bond cleavage occurs afterward.

According to the researchers, this change in reaction mechanism significantly reduces the formation of carbon monoxide (CO) byproducts while preserving the strong ability of Cu sites to dissociate H2 efficiently."Our study may provide a new pathway to addressing the long-standing trade-off between activity and selectivity in methanol synthesis from CO2," said Prof. Sun.

Source: ScienceDaily

Reversing prediabetes cuts risk of deadly heart problems by 58%

 People with prediabetes who return their blood sugar levels to a normal range may significantly reduce their chances of developing major cardiovascular problems, according to new research from King's College London published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

The study found that reversing prediabetes by normalizing blood glucose levels was associated with more than a 50% reduction in the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease or being hospitalized for heart failure.

The findings are particularly noteworthy because recent research has suggested that lifestyle changes alone, such as exercising more, losing weight, and improving diet, do not appear to reduce cardiovascular risk in people with prediabetes.

Taken together, the results point to prediabetes remission as a potentially powerful new target for preventing heart disease and improving long-term health outcomes. The findings could also influence how doctors approach treatment for people with prediabetes.

"This study challenges one of the biggest assumptions in modern preventative medicine. For years, people with prediabetes have been told that losing weight, exercising more and eating healthier will protect them from heart attacks and early death. While these lifestyle changes are unquestionably valuable, the evidence does not support that they reduce heart attacks or mortality in people with prediabetes. Instead, we show that remission of prediabetes is associated with a clear reduction in fatal cardiac events, heart failure, and all-cause mortality," explained study lead author Dr. Andreas Birkenfeld, Reader in Diabetes, King's College London and University Hospital Tuebingen.

Prediabetes Affects More Than One Billion People Worldwide

Prediabetes occurs when blood sugar levels are elevated but not high enough to meet the criteria for type 2 diabetes. Although many people with prediabetes eventually develop type 2 diabetes, the condition itself is also linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, one of the leading causes of death worldwide.

The condition is extremely common. About one in five adults in the United Kingdom has either diabetes or prediabetes. In the United States, more than one in three adults are affected, while in China the figure reaches four in ten. Researchers estimate that more than one billion people globally have prediabetes.

Long-Term Studies Reveal Lasting Heart Benefits

The research team, led by Dr. Andreas Birkenfeld of King's College London and University Hospital Tuebingen, reexamined data from two major diabetes prevention studies: the US Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) and the Chinese DaQing Diabetes Prevention Outcomes Study (DaQingDPOS).

Both studies tracked people with prediabetes for decades and included interventions such as increased physical activity and healthier eating habits.

Researchers found that participants who achieved remission of prediabetes experienced a 58% lower risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalization for heart failure. The benefit remained evident decades after blood glucose levels returned to normal, suggesting that the effects of glucose normalization may be long lasting.

The analysis also showed that people who reversed prediabetes had a 42% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, and other major cardiovascular events.

Importantly, the findings were consistent across both the US and Chinese study populations.

Why Prediabetes Remission May Matter More Than Lifestyle Changes Alone

Earlier analyses of the same studies found that combined lifestyle interventions, including increased exercise and healthier diets, did not significantly reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

Source: Sciendaily