Elderly people with Type 2 diabetes are at higher risk of cognitive dysfunction

Elderly people with diabetes are more prone to cognitive decline
than those without diabetes. Image: NIH-NIA

An ageing population with diabetes suffers from a variety of problems, very often simultaneously.

Professor Velandai Srikanth and Dr Chris Moran are Geriatricians with expertise in diabetes and dementia research based at Peninsula Health, and are part of its Academic Unit. They see elderly people with what clinicians call 'comorbidities' - that is, two or more coexisting conditions - on a regular basis.

In a recently published Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology paper, they and colleagues explore the intersection of two common disorders, type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cognitive dysfunction. They have found that people with diabetes tend to also have reduced cognitive performance, and a high proportion - one fifth - of those over 60 with T2D might have dementia.

"It's important to help people with T2D retain good cognitive function. The challenge for us is to establish the mechanisms of what we call 'incident dementia', or dementia that arises as a consequence of suffering from diabetes. Interestingly but sadly, no diabetes-specific medical treatments have been shown to reduce the risk of cognitive dysfunction in diabetes. So this is a fertile field for future research," said Prof Srikanth.

Srikanth V, Sinclair AJ, Hill-Briggs F, Moran C, Biessels GJ. Type 2 diabetes and cognitive dysfunction-towards effective management of both comorbidities. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2020 Jun;8(6):535-545. doi: 10.1016/S2213-8587(20)30118-2. Review. PMID: 32445740