2023-05-31 10:05:09
The earlier a person develops type 2 diabetes (T2D), the higher the risk of developing dementia later in life. This is the result of a study from the USA published in the journal Diabetologia. The authors also showed that early detection of prediabetes and preventing its progression to type 2 diabetes can significantly reduce cases of dementia.
Prediabetes is an intermediate stage of high blood sugar, but not yet the threshold for type 2 diabetes. Most people who develop type 2 diabetes go through this “window” of prediabetes. In middle-aged American adults with prediabetes, 5 to 10 percent will develop type 2 diabetes each year. A total of 70 percent of prediabetes patients in the United States will develop this type of diabetes in their lifetime.
Of 12,000 participants in the US study, 20 percent had prediabetes. The researchers did not find a significant connection between prediabetes and dementia. However, they found that diabetes that occurs at a young age is most strongly associated with dementia. For example, prediabetics who developed type 2 diabetes before the age of two had a threefold risk of dementia in old age. The risk of dementia had increased by 73 percent for people up to the age of 60 and by 23 percent for those up to 70 years of age. Only at the age of 80+ was the development of type 2 diabetes not associated with an increased risk of dementia.
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