INS and Alzheimer disease: Interestingly, if miR-153 does in fact interact with IRS2, that would tie this miRNA to the insulin regulatory pathway; in addition to the known association of diabetes with increased dementia risk, there is some evidence that insulin may be directly involved in AD, so this association should be a focus of further investigation (Watson and Craft, 2003;Biessels and Kappelle, 2005;Craft, 2007;Whitmer, 2007).