Connecting Alzheimers Disease, Parkinsons Disease, and Type 2 Diabetes Through Disease Network Models and Enrichment Analyses

<p>Increasingly recognized as a major risk factor for age-related cognitive dysfunction, metabolic syndrome/type 2 diabetes has been associated with altered brain functions, in particular insulin resistance. We constructed disease models and performed enrichment analyses to link these observations to neurobiology.</p> <p>Many pathways are significantly enriched in disease models of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes, including response to insulin stimulus, insulin receptor signaling, elevation of cytosolic calcium ion concentration, positive regulation of phospholipase C activity, phosphoinositide-mediated signaling, and regulation of blood pressure. These data support our hypothesis that the associations between Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes can be recapitulated on a molecular level and provide further evidence that type 2 diabetes drugs may have clinical utility for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.