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Energy/Glucose Metabolism in Neurodegenerative Diseases

  • Chapter
Molecular Mechanisms of Dementia

Part of the book series: Contemporary Neuroscience ((CNEURO))

Abstract

That disorders in energy/glucose metabolism can cause neurological and psychiatric disorders has been known for over a century. After the work of Claude Bernard on the importance of glucose metabolism, the German-speaking neurologists, psychiatrists, and pathologists (“alienists”) recognized on neuropathological grounds that impairing the supply of glucose and oxygen to the brain could cause a variety of neurological syndromes (1,2). That impairments of energy/glucose metabolism were important causes of diseases of the brain remained conventional wisdom through the 1950s. Among the evidence in support of this view were:

  1. 1.

    Extensive studies in aviation medicine, documenting the sensitivity of higher brain functions to reductions in oxygen tension (3);

  2. 2.

    The widespread use of hypoglycemic (insulin) shock therapy in the treatment of psychoses; and

  3. 3.

    The recognition from even early neurochemical studies that (a) mammalian brain has a second-to-second dependence on glucose/energy metabolism to maintain function, and (b) impairments of cerebral glucose/energy metabolism typically impair brain function.

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Authors
  1. John P. Blass
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Genetics and Aging Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA

    Wilma Wasco  & Rudolph E. Tanzi  & 

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Blass, J.P. (1997). Energy/Glucose Metabolism in Neurodegenerative Diseases. In: Wasco, W., Tanzi, R.E. (eds) Molecular Mechanisms of Dementia. Contemporary Neuroscience. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-471-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-471-9_7

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5889-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-59259-471-9

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