Diabetes is a grave disease which may lead to a lot of severe conditions. Now a study claims that diabetes may augment the danger of Alzheimer’s disease and the threat of memory loss in individuals who don’t suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
But apparently it is not clear whether people with Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have more quick memory loss as compared to those who have Alzheimer’s disease but no diabetes. The research proposes that those with both diseases may in fact have a slower rate of memory loss as opposed to people who had only Alzheimer’s disease.
Study author Caroline Sanz, MD, of INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Toulouse, commented, “This result was surprising. Our initial hypothesis was that diabetes would increase the rate of cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease.”
For the study, experts examined around 608 people with slight to moderate Alzheimer’s disease for around four years and tested their memory and thinking skills twice a year. A sum of 63 people suffered from diabetes. Experts are not sure as to why the pace of memory loss was slower for people with diabetes.
Sanz mentioned, “One possible explanation is that diabetes in the elderly differs from that in younger people and in addition, elderly people with diabetes may be more likely to receive cardiovascular medications such as drugs for high blood pressure than people who don’t have diabetes.”
Sanz added that these drugs have been reported to decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and also the rate of cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Other possible explanations for these findings may relate to differences in brain lesions in those people with diabetes as compared to those without diabetes.
The study was published in Neurology.