Sera from prediabetic patients induce changes in neurons and glia in mix primary cultures

M.P. CANAL; A. DE TOMAS LIORO; CECILIA PUGLIESE; ADELINA BADOLATI; M.V. BAEZ

Villa Carlos Paz

Congreso; XXXIV Reunion Anual SAN; 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Type 2 diabetes (DBT2) is a metabolic disorder related to neurodegeneration. Several hypotheses were proposed in order to elucidate the cause of this process. Amongst them, the ones involving stress signaling and inflammation are the best investigated. Furthermore, high glucose levels and RAGE products were also suggested. Prediabetes 2 (preDBT) is considered to be a step before DBT2, with glucose levels intermediate between normal and DBT levels. However, it is not well understood if preDBT syndrome per se, or the progression to DBT2, could cause neurodegeneration. We decided to investigate if neurodegeneration could take place in these early stages. For this reason, we incubated primary mixed cultures (astrocytes and neurons) with sera from patients with altered fasting glucose (AG, the first steps of PreDBT) for one hour (acute treatment) or seven days (chronic treatment). As controls we used sera from people with normal fasting glucose values (NG). Sera from both groups differed only in glucose values. Our results indicate that while In acute treatment sera from AG patients can induce cellular stress, in chronic treatment it induces changes in astrocytes number and shape. These last cultures also showed altered neuron number. Both the increase in astrocyte and the reduction in neurons percentage correlate with glucose levels.These preliminary results would lead us to hypothesize that the increase in glucose values could start changes in neurons and glia that are compatible with neurodegeneration.