Dementia linked to high blood sugar levels
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Higher blood sugar levels — even well short of diabetes — seem to raise the risk of developing dementia, a major new study finds. Researchers say this suggests a novel way to try to prevent Alzheimer’s disease — by keeping glucose at a healthy level.
Alzheimer’s is by far the most common form of dementia and it’s long been known that diabetes makes it more likely. The new study tracked blood sugar over time in all sorts of people — with and without diabetes — to see how it affects risk for the mind-robbing disease.
The results challenge current thinking by showing that it’s not just the high glucose levels of diabetes that are a concern, said the study’s leader, Dr Paul Crane of the University of Washington in Seattle.
“It’s a nice, clean pattern” — risk rises as blood sugar does, said Dallas Anderson, a scientist at the National Institute on Aging, the federal agency that paid for the study.
“This is part of a larger picture” and adds evidence that exercising and controlling blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol are a viable way to delay or prevent dementia, he said.
Because so many attempts to develop effective drugs have failed, “it looks like ... our best bet,” Anderson said.
“We have to do something. If we just do nothing and wait around till there’s some kind of cocktail of pills, we could be waiting a long time.”
About 35 million people worldwide have dementia. What causes it isn’t known. Current treatments ease symptoms.
People who have diabetes don’t make enough insulin, or their bodies don’t use insulin well, to turn food into energy. That causes blood sugar to rise, which can damage the kidneys and other organs — possibly the brain, researchers say.
The new study, published in yesterday’s New England Journal of Medicine, just tracked people and did not test whether lowering someone’s blood sugar would help treat or prevent dementia. That would have to be tested in a new study, and people should not seek blood sugar tests they wouldn’t normally get otherwise, Crane said.
“We don’t know ... whether bringing down the glucose level will prevent or somehow modify dementia,” he said.
Eating well, exercising and controlling weight all help to keep blood sugar in line.
The study involved 2,067 people 65 and older in a Seattle-area health care system. At the start, 232 of those taking part had diabetes. Participants had at least five blood sugar tests within a few years of starting the study and more later. They were tested for thinking skills and asked about smoking, exercise and other dementia factors.
After nearly seven years of follow-up, 524 had developed dementia.
Among participants who started out without diabetes, those with higher glucose levels over the previous five years had an 18 percent greater risk of developing dementia than those with lower glucose levels.
Among participants with diabetes at the outset, those with higher blood sugar were 40 percent more likely to develop dementia than diabetics at the lower end of the glucose spectrum.
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