The Journal of nutritional biochemistryAug 17, 2022

Time-limited eating improves Alzheimer's progression worsened by daily rhythm disruption in diabetic mice

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 3, 2026

Abstract

Time-restricted feeding (TRF) may protect against Alzheimer's disease progression in diabetic mice under altered light/dark cycles.

Altered light/dark cycles disrupted circadian rhythms in the hippocampus of diabetic mice.
TRF prevented the disruption of circadian rhythms in diabetic mice.
TRF reduced body weight and lipid accumulation associated with circadian disruption in diabetic mice.
Cognition was impaired in diabetic mice experiencing circadian disruption, which was linked to increased tau phosphorylation.
TRF reversed cognitive impairments and tau phosphorylation in diabetic mice under circadian disruption.
Normal mice were unaffected by altered light/dark cycles regarding cognition and tau phosphorylation.

Simplified

Circadian rhythms, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are closely related and interacted with each other. We have previously showed circadian disruption aggravated progression of AD in T2DM mice. Time-restricted feeding (TRF) is shown to be a potential synchronizer. This study aims to determine whether TRF has a protective effect against the circadian disruption-aggravated progression of AD in T2DM. 6-week-old male diabetic (db/db) mice and wildtype (wt/wt) mice were kept under normal 12:12 light/dark cycles or altered 6:18 light/dark cycles (dark extended to 18 h) with or without TRF (food restricted to 8 h during the active (dark) period). After 8 weeks, three behavioral tests (open field test, novel object recognition test, barnes maze test) were performed and the circadian gene expression, body weight, lipid levels and AD-associated tau phosphorylation were evaluated. We found altered light/dark cycles contributed to disruptive circadian rhythms in the hippocampus of db/db mice, while TRF prevented this effect. TRF also ameliorated circadian disruption-aggravated increased body weight and lipid accumulation in db/db mice. Importantly, the db/db mice under circadian disruption showed impaired cognition accompanied by increased tau phosphorylation, whereas TRF reversed these changes. The altered light/dark cycles only affected circadian rhythms but not other indicators like plasma/liver lipids, cognition and tau phosphorylation in the wt/wt mice. Collectively, TRF has a protective effect against altered light/dark cycles-aggravated AD progression in diabetic mice.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View Full Text ↗

Time-limited eating improves Alzheimer's progression worsened by daily rhythm disruption in diabetic mice

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief