WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Diabetes may age the brain by up to four years, according to a new study based on MRI scans.
The silver lining, say Swedish researchers, is that healthy lifestyle changes may help stave off neuroaging.
“An older looking brain compared to one's chronological age indicates a deviation from the normal ageing process and may be an early warning sign of dementia,” warned lead study author Abigail Dove.
“On the positive side, people with diabetes may be able to influence their brain health through healthy living,” added Dove, a neurobiology graduate student at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
Her team published their findings on August 28 in the journal Diabetes Care.
As Dove's group noted, type 2 diabetes has long been recognized as a risk factor for dementia, but it was unclear how prediabetes and diabetes affect brain health in people without dementia.
The new study aimed to improve on this by analysing MRI brain scans from more than 31,000 people aged 40 to 70 years old who were enrolled in a British database called UK Biobank.
Dove and his colleagues used AI techniques to measure each individual's relative “brain age.”
They found that the average brain age of people whose medical records showed they had prediabetes was six months older than people without diabetes.
People with severe diabetes had an average brain age that was 2.3 years older, while people with poorly controlled diabetes had an average brain age that was 4 years older than people without glycemic disorders.
But the study also found that people who are physically active and don't smoke or drink alcohol are much less likely to experience excessive brain aging.
“The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the population is high and increasing,” Dove said in a Karolinska Institutet news release. “We hope that our research will help prevent cognitive impairment and dementia in people with diabetes and prediabetes.”
More Information
For more information on how diabetes affects the brain, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Source: Karolinska Institutet, News Release, August 28, 2024
