Individuals with diabetes may have a higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, a condition that involves difficulties with thinking and learning and may be an intermediate step toward Alzheimer's disease, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Among cardiovascular risk factors, type 2 diabetes mellitus has been consistently related to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease," the authors write as background information in the article. 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.
Jos' A. Luchsinger, M.D., and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, studied 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. At the beginning of the study and again every 18 months through 2003, each participant underwent an in-person interview and standard assessment, which included a medical history, physical and neurological examination, and a battery of neurological tests that measured learning, memory, reason and language skills, among others. Of the participants, 23.9 percent had diabetes, 68.2 percent had hypertension, 33.9 percent had heart disease and 15 percent had had a stroke.