Diabetes and Alzheimer's disease: shared genetic susceptibility?

A search of PubMed using the terms "diabetes" and "Alzheimer's disease" yields nearly 9000 articles, suggesting that a mechanistic link between these two common diseases exists. However, although Alzheimer's disease has been described as type 3 diabetes,1 no clear mechanistic link between the disorders has been established.2 We aimed to assess whether there is any shared genetic risk between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. If proven to exist, such a link would give mechanistic insight and would be of clinical relevance, because type 2 diabetes could be a modifiable risk factor for dementia.