Keeping prediabetes from progressing to full-blown type 2 diabetes can reduce patients’ risk of dementia later in life, especially in younger people, a new study suggests.
Previous research has suggested that prediabetes is linked with greater risks for cognitive decline and dementia, but the new study suggests that much of that risk is limited to people who go on to develop diabetes.
In prediabetes, patients have elevated blood sugar levels that are not enough for a diagnosis of diabetes but that indicate a higher risk for the disease.
Researchers reviewed data on 11,656 middle-aged participants without diabetes at baseline, including 2,330 with prediabetes. By age 80, dementia had developed in 15% of those with prediabetes compared with 10% in those without. By age 90, those rates were 63% and 53%, respectively, according to a report published on Wednesday in Diabetologia.
Overall, those with prediabetes had a 12% higher risk of developing dementia, but among those with prediabetes who didn’t eventually develop diabetes, the odds of dementia were no higher than in the general population, the researchers found.
The link between progression to diabetes and dementia was strongest in younger individuals.
The risk for dementia was 23% higher when prediabetes progressed to diabetes between ages 70 and 79, 73% higher when diabetes developed between ages 60 and 69, and nearly 300% higher when prediabetes progressed to diabetes before age 60.
More than 80% of people with prediabetes do not realize they have it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Improving early detection and working with patients to prevent or delay the progression to prediabetes “may have long-term population benefits for dementia prevention,” the study authors concluded.
This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot.
Additional reporting by Shawana Alleyne-Morris.
