Understanding the delicate balance of the various proteins in the Akt/mTOR pathway in relation to alcohol’s impact on AD could ultimately provide novel targets for therapeutic strategies that are able to restore balance rather than simply increase or decrease specific proteins. It should also be acknowledged that there is a need for future studies to consider the impact of changes in the periphery (i.e., liver, pancreas) on the CNS. Changes in the brain, especially to regulatory processes, result in changes in the periphery that can in turn act as a feedback loop to result in further changes to the regulatory processes in the brain. Alcohol is well known to have detrimental impact on various organs and these changes in metabolism and insulin regulation are more than likely also factors that need to be considered when studying the CNS mTOR/Akt pathway in the context of AD and long-term alcohol consumption.
