Endocrine Abstracts

Damages of the central and peripheral nervous systems as peripheral neuropathy and encephalopathy of mixed vascular and metabolic genesis, respectively, are known to take place in diabetes mellitus, ultimately resulting in progressing decline of cognitive function and development of dementia. Findings of many studies demonstrated interrelation between increases in the TNF-α concentrations and onset of inflammation, tumor processes and a number of metabolic, autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. The work was initiated to compare the TNF-α concentrations in the blood of serum of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and neurodegenerative disorders.

Methods and materials: 115 persons were included into the experimental group, 50 patients with diabetic neuropathy, 50 patients with vascular dementia and 15 patients with Alzheimer’s disease among them. The control group included the non-diabetics and those without cognitive disorders. Concentrations of TNF-α in blood serum were measured using ELISA.

Results: Our findings demonstrated significant increases in concentrations of the cytokine both in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and those with Alzheimer’s disease, in contrast to the non-diabetics and people with normal cognitive function. Type 2 diabetes mellitus complications including diabetic neuropathy progressed, the TNF-α concentrations were found to significantly increased in blood serum of patients; the concentrations of the cytokine being significantly higher than those in patients with neurodegenerative disorder. This could be the evidence for the more severe effect of inflammatory load on an organism upon progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Comparison of the TNF-α concentrations in blood serum of patients with vascular dementia of various severities helped find significant differences (P<0.05) in the parameter. The disease progresses, concentrations of the cytokine increase twice. Comparison of the TNF-α concentrations in blood serum of patients with vascular dementia and in those with Alzheimer’s disease demonstrated no significant differences (P>0.05). Thus, comparison of TNF-α concentrations in groups of patients under study as compared to healthy subjects demonstrated significant increases in the concentrations of the cytokine in both patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and those with neurodegenerative disease.