Peter J Havel
University of California-Davis, CA·Neuroscience
People with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes face a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Brain disease may in turn worsen diabetes, creating a vicious cycle.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
metabolic syndrome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2028
What they work on
- Test whether a high-sugar diet in macaques triggers Alzheimer's-like pathology and blood vessel damage in the hippocampus and default mode network, brain regions for memory and executive function.
- Test whether high-sugar-diet-induced metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance cause brain and body deficits, including behavior changes, that raise dementia risk, using MRI and PET imaging of blood flow and glucose use.
- Link brain inflammation, blood-brain barrier leakage, impaired insulin signaling and mitochondrial dysfunction to liver and other body changes using proteomic, transcriptomic and immunochemical analyses in the same animals.
- Examine how dementia-related changes in the hypothalamus, the brain's metabolic control center, may worsen blood sugar and fat regulation and speed progression toward type 2 diabetes.
More about the research
How these conditions feed each other is not well understood, and this project aims to uncover the mechanisms.
Why it matters
Diabetes and dementia are both common and may worsen each other. By showing how a high-sugar diet and metabolic disease drive brain damage, and how brain damage disturbs blood sugar control, this primate work could guide better-targeted treatments for people with type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome who are at risk of Alzheimer's or vascular dementia.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sarah Elzinga
Michigan State University, MI·Neuroscience·Early-career
Establish how the cGAS/STING pathway, a DNA-sensing innate immune alarm, and the surrounding inflammatory environment change as obesity and prediabetes progress from midlife to later life, and how this tracks with cognitive impairment.
Ren Zhang
Wayne State University, MI·Biochemistry
Determine whether MNADK, the mitochondrial NAD kinase, preserves liver energy balance and insulin sensitivity and reduces risk of NASH and type 2 diabetes, using genetically engineered mouse models.
Ibolya Rutkai-Green
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Physiology
Test whether reduced brain blood flow (hypoperfusion), produced in mice by narrowing both carotid arteries (BCAS), worsens age-related leakiness of the blood-brain barrier, using in vivo two-photon microscopy in young and old mice of both sexes.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.