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"High blood levels of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite, may guard against Alzheimer's disease, new research suggests. "Hopefully, in 10 or 15 years this may be one of many agents that we use to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease," said senior study author Dr. Sudha Seshadri, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. "Or it may be one of many markers that we measure in combination to predict risk." But many more studies of different population groups are needed to determine whether leptin can play such a pivotal role in predicting the risk of Alzheimer's, Seshadri said. The research, which was reported in the Dec. 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was done because "there has been some data relating body weight to the risk of Alzheimer's disease," Seshadri said. "When we looked at animal studies, we found some data to indicate that leptin not only produces a feeling of satiety but also has a beneficial effect on the hippocampus. It was important to see if that was true in humans." The hippocampus is a portion of the brain that plays a role in important aspects of memory."

"ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2009) - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) researchers have confirmed that a diet rich in polyphenols and polyunsaturated fatty acids, patented as an LMN diet, helps boost the production of the brain's stem cells -neurogenesis- and strengthens their differentiation in different types of neuron cells. The research revealed that mice fed an LMN diet, when compared to those fed a control diet, have more cell proliferation in the two areas of the brain where neurogenesis is produced, the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus, both of which are greatly damaged in patients with Alzheimer's disease. These results give support to the hypothesis that a diet made up of foods rich in these antioxidant substances could delay the onset of this disease or even slow down its evolution. The study will be published in the December issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and was directed by Mercedes Unzeta, professor of the UAB Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology"