In a recent discovery made by Scottish researchers a commonly used drug to fight against the effects of diabetes could play a key role in the treatment and prevention of the brain disorder, Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists from the Dundee University along with a panel of international collaborators have found that metformin, which is diabetic drug, can be very helpful in treating patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and prevent it from occurring in healthy people.

They have also displayed during experiments that this drug causes an important protein to get activated which is able to prevent the brain cells from dying in AD patients.

The scientists are now trying to get some funding to conduct pre-clinical trials to go ahead with a ‘potentially exciting breakthrough’ for developing a new kind of treatment for AD. Almost 400,000 people suffer from this condition in the UK alone.

Susann Schweiger, professor of molecular medicine at Dundee University’s Division of Medical Sciences was the leader of this breakthrough research.

She believes that the thought of exploring the effects of metformin in treating patients with AD just came to her from nowhere while she was at work.