Diabetes and Smell

In this episode, Dr. Wu and co-host Darren Gonzalez explore a striking paradox at the intersection of diabetes and neuroscience, drawing on Type 2 Diabetes Impairs Odour Detection, Olfactory Memory and Olfactory Neuroplasticity; Effects Partly Reversed by the DPP-4 Inhibitor Linagliptin, published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications in 2018 by Grazyna Lietzau, William Davidsson, Claes-Göran Östenson, Fausto Chiazza, David Nathanson, Hiranya Pintana, Josefin Skogsberg, Thomas Klein, Thomas Nyström, Vladimer Darsalia, and Cesare Patrone of Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Using a lean diabetic rat model, the researchers showed that type 2 diabetes causes a 50 percent collapse in olfactory neurogenesis, disables the brain's scent-regulating interneurons, and creates a 52 percent backlog of stalled memory cells in the piriform cortex — and that while a common diabetes drug beautifully rebuilt the cellular architecture, the rats still could not smell a thing.