“Typical clinical assessments for diagnosing diabetes focus on blood glucose, insulin levels, and percentage of body weight,” laments another study author, Botond Anthol, Ph.D. — Cognitive function has not been paid attention to before.
To assess how diabetes affects the brain and normal aging process, scientists analyzed the data of 20 thousand people aged 50 to 80 years. Information taken from the British Biobank. Selected those who have the results of a brain scan, a measurement of its functions, one group included healthy people, the other – people with confirmed type 2 diabetes.
– Aging, like type 2 diabetes, causes changes in executive functions such as working memory, learning and thinking flexibilityalso changes brain processing speedthe scientists said in a study published in the scientific journal eLife. “But in people with diabetes, for example, executive function declined in addition to age, by another 13.1 percent, information processing speed lost 6.7 percent. Also, people with type 2 diabetes consistently had markedly lower cognitive abilities compared to healthy people of the same age and level of education.