8/17/2016 Sugarhasastrongereffectonourbrainsthanweevenrealised,studyfindsScienceAlert

Sugar has a stronger eect on our brains than we

even realised, study nds
The complete opposite of what scientists thought.
BEC CREW 16 AUG 2016

German scientists have discovered that our brains are actively taking in sugar
from the blood stream, overturning the long-held assumption that this was a
purely passive process.

Even more surprising, they also found that its not our neurons that are
responsible for absorbing all that sugar - its our glial cells, which make up 90
percent of the brains total cells, and until very recently, have been shrouded in
mystery.

Not only does the nd go against conventional wisdom on how our brains
respond to sugar intake, it also shows how cells other than our neurons can
actively play a role in controlling our behaviour.

Astrocytes - which are a specialised form of glial cell that outnumber neurons
more than vefold - have long been thought of as little more than support cells,
helping to maintain the blood-brain barrier, carry nutrients to the nervous
tissue, and play a role in brain and spinal cord repair.

But we now have evidence that they also play a role in human feeding
behaviours, with researchers nding that their ability to sense and actively take
in sugar is regulating the kinds of appetite-related signals that our neurons send
out to the rest of the body.

And were not talking about a little bit of sugar here: the human brain
experiences the highest level of sugar consumption out of every organ in the
body.

"Our results showed for the rst time that essential metabolic and behavioural
processes are not regulated via neuronal cells alone, and that other cell types in
the brain, such as astrocytes, play a crucial role," explains study leader Matthias
Tschp from the Technical University of Munich.

"This represents a paradigm shift and could help explain why it has been so
dicult to nd suciently ecient and save medicines for diabetes and obesity
until now."

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8/17/2016 Sugarhasastrongereffectonourbrainsthanweevenrealised,studyfindsScienceAlert

Tschp and his team decided to investigate how the brain decides to take in
sugar from the blood - and how much - because this is directly related to our
feelings of hunger.

A better understanding of why we get hungry could quite literally change

modern society, with recent estimates putting the number of obese people in
the world above those of underweight people.

"We ... suspected that a process as important as providing the brain with
sucient sugar was unlikely to be completely random," says one of the team,
neurobiologist Cristina Garca-Cceres.

"We were misled by the fact that nerve cells apparently did not control this
process, and therefore rst thought it to occur passively. Then we had the idea
that glia cells such as astrocytes, which had long been misunderstood as less
important 'support cells', might have something to do with transporting sugar
into the brain."

The team used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to observe how
insulin receptors act on the surface of the brains astrocytes. Insulin is a
hormone produced by the pancreas to allow the body to use or store sugar (in
the form of glucose) from carbohydrates in the food we eat.

They found that if these receptors were missing on certain astrocytes, it would
result in less activity in the neurons that are responsible for curbing food
uptake, called proopiomelanocortin neurons.

Not only that, but they found that astrocytes missing insulin receptors actually
became less ecient over time in transporting glucose into the brain -
particularly in a region of the hypothalamus that sends out signals that you're
full, orsatiated.

So it looks like glial cells, not the neurons, are the true 'gate-keepers' for how
much sugar our brains absorb, and we now know thatsugar has such a
powerful inuence on them, they're seeking out sugar, rather than just passively
absorbing it.

A better understanding of how this workscould change everything about how

we treat obesity in the future.

The team says that a lot more research is now needed to adjust the old model
that assumed the neurons alone were regulating our food intake and
metabolism, and suggest that maybe even our immune cells are playing a role in
it as well.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," says Garca-Cceres, "but at least now we
have a better idea where to look."

The research has been published in Cell.

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