IGF1 and Alzheimer disease: However, other studies have reported that IGF-I can promote the production of amyloid-β (Araki et al., 2009) and that knocking-out IGF-IR in neurons of a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD) favors amyloid-β clearance probably by preserving autophagy and improves spatial memory (Gontier et al., 2015).