THE ESSENTIAL
- Type 2 diabetes is the most common diabetes in the world.
- It is estimated that 20-30% of adults with diabetes are undiagnosed.
According to’Inserm, 90% of diabetics have type 2 diabetes, also called “insulin-dependent”. It is characterized by too high blood sugar levels. This disease leads to sometimes serious complications for the patient who suffers from it: more risk of having a myocardial infarction, a stroke, kidney failure or liver disease.
26% accelerated aging
Type 2 diabetes would also participate in the neurodegeneration of the brain. This is confirmed by a new study published in the scientific journal eLife. In patients with this chronic disease, brain aging would be accelerated by about 26% compared to people without diabetes.
To achieve this result, the authors analyzed the comprehensive cognitive assessments, carried out in the context of clinical care, of 20,000 people aged 50 to 80. Among them, some had type 2 diabetes and some did not. From these data, the authors were able to determine diabetes-specific brain and cognitive changes. There are two main ones: changes in executive functions, such as learning and flexibility of thought, and slower brain processing speed.
Thus, the researchers claimed that patients with type 2 diabetes have consistently and significantly lower cognitive performance than healthy people of the same age and education level.
Greater loss of gray matter in people with diabetes
At the same time, the scientists also measured the impact of the disease on the gray matter of the brain. With age, all humans lose gray matter, primarily in the ventral striatum, an area of the brain important for executive functions. In people with type 2 diabetes, the amount of gray matter is reduced even faster. In the ventral striatum, this decrease was 6.2%.
“Clinical assessments that aim to diagnose diabetes typically focus on blood sugar, insulin levels, and body mass index. But the neurological effects of type 2 diabetes may already be present years before the disease sets in. is detected by these standard measures, which means that by the time type 2 diabetes is diagnosed by conventional tests, patients may already have suffered irreversible brain damage.”underlined Botond Antal, one of the authors.
According to the researchers, new screening tests should therefore be set up to assess, upstream, these brain changes associated with diabetes. “Brain imaging could allow us to measure and monitor these neurocognitive effects associated with diabetes. Our results show that there is an urgent need to determine brain biomarkers for type 2 diabetes as well as treatment strategies that specifically target these effects. neurocognitive”said Liliane Mujica-Parodi, one of the authors.