Date of Award

12-1-2023

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Ewan McNay

Committee Members

Andrew Poulos, Kristen Zuloaga

Keywords

Alzheimer's disease, Diabeties, Exercise, Neurodegeneration, Neuroimmunology, Obesity

Subject Categories

Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Abstract

The number of individuals with diabetes worldwide has quadrupled since 1980, making diabetes the 4th most common cause of death from non-communicable disease. Since 1975, the number of individuals classified as obese has tripled to 650 million adults, or 13% of the global population (World Health Organization, 2018). Obesity rates in the United States are three times the global average, with 39.8% of adults having a body-mass index of 30 or greater (Hales, 2017). At the same time, in the United States, AD is the sixth most common cause of death, with 5.8 million currently diagnosed, a number that may grow to over 13 million people by 2050 as the baby-boomer generation ages (“2020 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures,” 2020). Unfortunately, shared causal mechanisms between diabetes and AD cause significant comorbidity, with some researchers referring to AD as “type 3 diabetes” (de la Monte & Wands, 2008; Kandimalla et al., 2017; Steen et al., 2005) due to the commonalities between these pathologies. Meanwhile, the true impact of type 1 diabetes on brain health remains poorly understood, with varying methodologies reporting conflicting findings over time (Biessels et al., 2008; Chaytor, 2016).

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