Researchers Find Dementia in People With Diabetes Differs From Nondiabetics

Researchers from Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus say that dementia in some people with diabetes appears to be caused often by vascular disease in the brain, and the dementia that develops in people without diabetes is more likely associated with deposition of the plaque seen in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease meeting in Honolulu. They resulted from a study conducted among persons with Mexican ancestry but may have relevance to other populations, say the researchers. Also involved in the study were investigators from the University of California, San Francisco.

“This helps in understanding diabetes and dementia,” said Mayo neurologist Neill Graff-Radford, MD, who presented the findings. “It suggests that the vascular dementia seen in diabetics, which appears to be related to small blood vessel disease and strokes, can potentially be averted if development of diabetes is prevented.”

The results agree with a number of autopsy studies conducted on patients with dementia and diabetes, in which vascular abnormalities were found to be related to the dementia but the Alzheimer’s pathology of plaque and tangles was not, he says.

The findings also suggest that an experimental blood test to predict development of Alzheimer’s disease may be more accurate than some studies of people with dementia have suggested, because those studies included participants with diabetes, says Graff-Radford. “We now propose that future studies of this test should take into account diabetic status,” he says.

Source: Mayo Clinic