Diabetes May Significantly Increase Dementia Risk

One of the fears of aging is cognitive impairments, such as Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. Preventing diabetes, health researchers say, may improve your chances of avoiding this affliction.

Researchers writing in the latest issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, say people with diabetes are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, such as vascular dementia, which occurs when there is damage to blood vessels that eventually deprive the brain of oxygen.

“Our findings emphasize the need to consider diabetes as a potential risk factor for dementia,” said study author Yutaka Kiyohara, MD, PhD, of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. “Diabetes is a common disorder, and the number of people with it has been growing in recent years all over the world. Controlling diabetes is now more important than ever.”

While the causes of dementia are still being studied, many cases of diabetes stem from obesity and are preventable. Reducing diabetes, the researchers say, may reduce the number of future dementia cases.

Double the chances

The study found that people with diabetes were twice as likely to develop dementia as people with normal blood sugar levels. Of the 150 people with diabetes, 41 developed dementia, compared to 115 of the 559 people without diabetes who developed dementia.

The results remained the same after the researchers accounted for factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. The risk of dementia was also higher in people who did not have diabetes, but had impaired glucose tolerance, or were “pre-diabetes.”

In addition, the study found the risk of developing dementia significantly increased when blood sugar was still high two hours after a meal.

Diabetes is a chronic disease in which there are high levels of sugar in the blood. There are actually two forms of diabetes, Type 1 diabetes is not preventable. Keeping an ideal body weight and an active lifestyle may prevent type 2 diabetes, according to the National Institutes of Health.