Advanced Glycation End Products Increase Risk of Alzheimer's Disease

Recent research provides evidence that eating food cooked at high temperatures increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are a group of compounds that are combinations of sugars and proteins and other large molecules formed when food is cooked at high temperatures for a long time.

AGEs increase the risk of various chronic diseases through several mechanisms including increased inflammation and oxidative stress. They can also bind to the receptor for AGEs (RAGE).

RAGE transports beta-amyloid proteins across the blood-brain barrier and contributes to the development of Alzheimer's disease, the researchers explained.

"We found that mice kept on a diet high in AGEs, similar to Western diet, had high levels of AGEs in their brains together with deposits of beta-amyloid proteins, a component of the plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's disease" said Jaime Uribarri and Weijing Cai of The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

For the study, the values for AGE for many types of food were taken from a study by researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

549 foods were cooked and AGE content was measured. The researchers found that as the cooking temperature increased, the AGE content also increased.

The researchers found that meat made the highest contribution of AGEs, followed by vegetable oils, cheese and fish.

Source-Medindia