Medication for type 2 diabetes may cut the risk of developing dementia by up to 35 percent, a new study suggests.
Experts are intrigued by the potential for existing diabetes treatments to also prevent dementia, but stress that more research is needed to verify these findings. The study examined data from 110,885 diabetic patients under the care of the Korea National Health Insurance Service, who were prescribed either sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors or dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors.
SGLT-2 inhibitors work by reducing glucose absorption in the kidneys, while DPP-4 inhibitors block an enzyme that boosts insulin levels post-meal. Over the follow-up period, 1,172 participants were diagnosed with dementia. The study found that those taking SGLT-2 inhibitors had a 35 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those not on these medications.
However, some experts caution that the study’s design might have influenced the results and call for further trials. William Whiteley, associate director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, emphasised the need for randomised trials to confirm the impact of diabetes medications on dementia risk, suggesting that the observed effects might be due to study design quirks rather than the medication itself.
In a related study published in ‘Diabetes Care’, type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes were linked to accelerated brain aging. Analysing MRI scans of over 31,000 people from the UK Biobank, researchers found that those with pre-diabetes or diabetes had brains that appeared six months to 2.3 years older than their actual age.
