Short paper

Alzheimer's disease and Type 2 diabetes mellitus: the cholinesterase connection?

Appa Rao Allam³ , Gumpeny Ramachandra Sridhar¹ , Hanuman Thota² , Changalasetty Suresh Babu² , Akula Siva Prasad² and Ch Divakar⁴

¹  Department of Computer Sciences and Systems Engineering, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam 530 003, India

²  Endocrine and Diabetes Centre, 15-12-16 Krishnanagar, Visakhapatnam 530 002, India

³  Department of Computer Sciences, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, India

⁴  Department of Computer Science, Gandhi Institute of Technology And Management, Visakhapatnam, India

author email corresponding author email

Lipids in Health and Disease 2006, 5:28doi:10.1186/1476-511X-5-28

Published:	11 November 2006

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus tend to occur together. We sought to identify protein(s) common to both conditions that could suggest a possible unifying pathogenic role. Using human neuronal butyrylcholinesterase (AAH08396.1) as the reference protein we used BLAST Tool for protein to protein comparison in humans. We found three groups of sequences among a series of 12, with an E-value between 0–12, common to both Alzheimer's disease and diabetes: butyrylcholinesterase precursor K allele (NP_000046.1), acetylcholinesterase isoform E4-E6 precursor (NP_000656.1), and apoptosis-related acetylcholinesterase (1B41|A). Butyrylcholinesterase and acetylcholinesterase related proteins were found common to both Alzheimer's disease and diabetes; they may play an etiological role via influencing insulin resistance and lipid metabolism.