Treating Alzheimer’s: Finding the Relationship Between A High-sugar Diet and the Severity of Alzheimer’s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v14i1.8401Keywords:
Alzheimer's Disease, Neurodegenerative, Brain, High-Sugar Diet, Diet, Drosophila melanogaster, Tau Protein, DegredationAbstract
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects millions of Americans, characterized by progressive cognitive decline and memory loss. Despite over a century of research since its identification, gaps remain in understanding AD’s causes and effective treatments. Recent studies suggest dietary factors influence AD progression, but the impact of high-sugar diets is underexplored. This study investigates how a high-sugar diet affects Alzheimer’s severity using Drosophila melanogaster, a model organism with 75% of human genes. The study addresses whether high-sugar diets impact AD severity based on sex-specific differences in climbing patterns and eye development. The null hypothesis, stating that a high-sugar diet has no effect on AD severity, was rejected, with p-values of .001757 for climbing assays and .000067 for eye development, both below the significance threshold of .05. This indicates a significant impact of high-sugar diets on AD severity. Sex-specific results showed that female Drosophila exhibited greater resilience against AD-related neurodegeneration compared to males, contrary to some human studies suggesting more severe outcomes in women. This may be linked to biological differences, such as hormonal influences or metabolic responses. Female flies performed better in climbing assays and exhibited slightly better eye development under a high-sugar diet compared to males. These findings underscore the importance of considering sex-specific factors in AD research and potential dietary interventions. Future research should explore these effects in more complex organisms and investigate how various dietary components influence AD progression and protein aggregation, aiming to refine therapeutic strategies and personalized medicine approaches.
Downloads
References or Bibliography
Aggarwal, A., Reichert, H., & VijayRaghavan, K. (2019). A locomotor assay reveals deficits in heterozygous Parkinson’s disease model and proprioceptive mutants in adult Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(49), 24830–24839. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807456116
Alzheimer's Association. (2020). Stages of Alzheimer’s: Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/stages#:~:text=Alzheimer
Mayo Clinic. (2023). Alzheimer’s disease: Symptoms and causes. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER). https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20350447
Baker, N., Li, K., Quiquand, M., Ruggiero, R., & Wang, L.-H. (2014). Eye development. Methods (San Diego, Calif.), 68(1), 252–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2014.04.007
Cagan, R. (2009). Chapter 5 principles of Drosophila eye differentiation. Current Topics in Developmental Biology, 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0070-2153(09)89005-4
CBS, E. (2021, June 30). Model organism: Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). College of Biological Sciences. https://biology.ucdavis.edu/research/model-organisms/fruit-fly#:~:text=traumatic%20brain%20injury-
Eickelberg, V., Lüersen, K., Staats, S., & Rimbach, G. (2022). Phenotyping of Drosophila melanogaster—A nutritional perspective. Biomolecules, 12(2), 221. https://doi.org/10.3390/biom12020221
Friedrich, M. (2003). Evolution of insect eye development: First insights from fruit fly, grasshopper and flour beetle. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 43(4), 508–521. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/43.4.508
Hanamsagar, R., & Bilbo, S. (2016). Sex differences in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders: Focus on microglial function and neuroinflammation during development. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 160, 127–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2015.09.039
Kasanin, J., Wang, X., Jiao, W., Li, Q., & Lu, B. (2022). Studying Alzheimer’s disease using Drosophila melanogaster as a powerful tool. Advances in Alzheimer’s Disease, 11(3), 23–37. https://doi.org/10.4236/aad.2022.113003
Klosowski, R., & Hovemann, B. (2011). Technique notes climbing assay. Dros. Inf. Serv, (94), 127. https://www.ou.edu/journals/dis/DIS94/Klosowski%20127.pdf
Liu, L., Volpe, S., Ross, J. A., Grimm, J. A., Van Bockstaele, E. J., & Eisen, H. J. (2021). Dietary sugar intake and risk of Alzheimer’s disease in older women. Nutritional Neuroscience, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/1028415X.2021.1959099
Madabattula, S., Strautman, J. C., Bysice, A. M., O’Sullivan, J. A., Androschuk, A., Rosenfelt, C., Doucet, K., Rouleau, G., & Bolduc, F. (2015). Quantitative analysis of climbing defects in a Drosophila Model of neurodegenerative disorders. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 100. https://doi.org/10.3791/52741
Manjila, S., & Hasan, G. (2018). Flight and climbing assay for assessing motor functions in Drosophila. Bio-protocol, 8(5). https://doi.org/10.21769/bioprotoc.2742
MD, A. (2022, January 20). Why are women more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease? Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-are-women-more-likely-to-develop-alzheimers-disease-202201202672#:~:text=Women%20have%20stronger%20immune%20systems
Moreira, P. (2013). High-sugar diets, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimerʼs disease. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 16(4), 440–445. https://doi.org/10.1097/mco.0b013e328361c7d1
Murashov, A., Pak, E. S., Lin, C., Boykov, I. N., Buddo, K. A., Mar, J., Bhat, K. M., & Neufer, P. D. (2020). Preference and detrimental effects of high fat, sugar, and salt diet in wild‐caught Drosophila simulans are reversed by flight exercise. FASEB BioAdvances, 3(1), 49–64. https://doi.org/10.1096/fba.2020-00079
Nichols, C., Becnel, J., & Pandey, U. B. (2012). Methods to assay Drosophila behavior. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 61. https://doi.org/10.3791/3795
Pike, C. (2016). Sex and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 95(1-2), 671–680. https://doi.org/10.1002/jnr.23827
Robison, L., Gannon, O. J., Thomas, M. A., Salinero, A. E., Abi-Ghanem, C., Poitelon, Y., Belin, S., & Zuloaga, K. L. (2020). Role of sex and high-fat diet in metabolic and hypothalamic disturbances in the 3xTg-AD mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Neuroinflammation, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12974-020-01956-5
Sugar alters compounds that impact brain health in fruit flies. (2019). University of Michigan News. https://news.umich.edu/sugar-alters-compounds-that-impact-brain-health-in-fruit-flies/
Sun, B., Li, W.-W., Zhu, C., Jin, W.-S., Zeng, F., Liu, Y.-H., Bu, X.-L., Zhu, J., Yao, X.-Q., & Wang, Y.-J. (2018). Clinical research on Alzheimer’s Disease: Progress and Perspectives. Neuroscience Bulletin, 34(6), 1111–1118. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-018-0249-z
Yamaguchi, M., & Yoshida, H. (2018). Drosophila as a model organism. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 1076, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0529-0_1
Yokoyama, M., Kobayashi, H., Tatsumi, L., & Tomita, T. (2022). Mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2022.912995
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2025 Dhriti Gramani
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright holder(s) granted JSR a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distriute & display this article.
