The Diabetes - Cognitive Impairment - Alzheimer's Disease Link

Filed in archive Research on April 12, 2007

Mild cognitive impairment - a condition characterized by difficulties in learning and thinking - could lead towards Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Mild cognitive impairment-particularly a type known as amnestic mild cognitive impairment, which affects memory more significantly than non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment-is increasingly recognized as a transitional state between normal functioning and Alzheimer's disease.

Diabetics could be at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, as reported/published in the April issue of Archives of Neurology (one of the JAMA/Archives journals), which confirms the consistent association of type 2 diabetes mellitus to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Findings suggest that diabetes has an important independent role in the pathogenesis of AD and could also be a risk factor for non-amnestic forms of mild cognitive impairment and cognitive impairment.

While the study's analyses have been done on 918 individuals older than 65 years (average age 75.9) who did not have mild cognitive disorder or dementia when they enrolled between 1992 and 1994 (by José A. Luchsinger, M.D., and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center, New York), further analysis needs to be conducted on a larger population set.

Find more details from the full report.