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Type 2 Diabetes Linked to Rapid Decline in Mental
Function
McKnight's
July
2, 2008
Global
The longer a person has type 2 diabetes, the more
substantial and steeper his cognitive decline later in life, a new report
in the Journal of the American Geriatric Association said.
Researchers at
Harvard
Medical
School
tested more than 12,000 men and women with an average age of 70 for
diabetes and mental acuity over the course of the four-year study.
Diabetic participants performed more poorly on initial cognitive tests
than non-diabetics, and showed a markedly faster decline in capacity over
the duration of the study. There also were strong links between cognitive
performance and the amount of time a person has lived with diabetes.
Diabetes can cause damage to blood cells that travel
to the brain, which might be a contributing factor to the diminished
capabilities of diabetics, researchers say. They also speculate that
consistently high levels of insulin might increase the body's development
of amyloid-beta plaques, which many researchers identify as a hallmark of
Alzheimer's disease.
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