Jul 17, 2006, 17:44 GMT
Washington - People with diabetes have a sharply higher risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease, US scientists say.
Even patients with high blood sugar who only have borderline diabetes were found to have a higher risk of getting the deadly brain disease than people of the same age with normal blood sugar.
'Effective blood sugar control may lower risk of another diabetes associated complication dementia,' said Rachel A. Whitmer, a California-based scientist who explored the link in an eight-year study of nearly 23,000 patients with so-called type 2 diabetes.
The data were presented Sunday at an Alzheimer's conference in Madrid.
Dr Ronald Petersen, a member of the Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association, raised the prospect that as the US population ages a 'rising tide of obesity and diabetes' could increase the number of Alzheimer cases.
Diabetes treatment drugs known as thiazolidinediones (TZDs), which lower blood sugar, could offer hope in fighting the inflammation and other brain cell processes that may be related to the onset of Alzheimer's, the conference was told.
Boston University researcher Donald R. Miller led a team that used data on US military veterans to study more than 142,000 patients who received TZDs of insulin, the traditional diabetes treatment.
Veterans taking TZDs had almost 20 percent fewer new cases of Alzheimer's than those taking insulin, Miller and his colleagues concluded.
'These results are encouraging and suggest that TZDs may provide important benefits beyond their use in treating diabetes,' Miller said, though he cautioned that more studies were needed to confirm the conclusions.
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