. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Sep 2.

Published in final edited form as: Diabetologia. 2010 Feb 25;53(6):1046–1056. doi: 10.1007/s00125-010-1671-6

Table 1.

Comparison of key evidence supporting the toxic oligomer hypothesis of A-beta in Alzheimer's disease and IAPP in type 2 diabetes

Investigation	Alzheimer's disease		Type 2 diabetes

	Evidence?	References	Evidence?	References
Detection and quantification of oligomers in human tissue	✓	[22, 75-77]	✓	[40]^a
Characterisation of oligomers from human tissue	✓	[78]	✗	-
Extraction of oligomers from human tissue and application to cultured cells to determine cytotoxicity	✓	[78]	✗	-
Synthetic peptides capable of forming oligomers do or do not accurately mimic human peptides in vivo	✓	Reviewed in [79]	✗	-
Use of cell-derived human oligomers for in vivo experiments	✓	[80]	✗	-
Oligomer-binding antibodies can ameliorate neuronal (for A-beta) or islet (for IAPP) cell toxicity	✓	[36, 81]	✗	-
Oligomer-specific inhibitors can ameliorate neuronal (for A-beta) or islet (for IAPP) cell toxicity	✓	[82, 83]	✗	-

A11-immunoreactivity in paraffin-embedded human pancreas tissue. See related discussion regarding specificity of A11 in main commentary