Diabetes may age the brain by up to four years, according to a brain scan study, but lifestyle changes may be able to stave off neuronal ageing, a new study has found.
The report was published Wednesday in the journal Diabetes Care.
“An older-looking brain compared to chronological age indicates a deviation from the normal ageing process and may be an early warning sign of dementia,” lead author Abigail Dove, a neurobiology graduate student at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, said in a statement.
“On the positive side, it appears that people with diabetes may be able to influence their brain health through healthy living,” Dove added.
The researchers evaluated MRI scans of more than 31,000 dementia-free adults aged 40 to 70. The data came from the UK Biobank, a British database.
The team used artificial intelligence to determine each person's “brain age” over an 11-year period, during which each study participant was scanned up to two times. To arrive at their brain age, the researchers used data on each person's blood sugar status, medical history, details about medication use, cardiometabolic risk factors such as obesity and high blood pressure, and lifestyle habits such as smoking and physical activity.
The brain age of the prediabetic group (43.3% of participants) was, on average, 60 years higher than their chronological age, while the diabetic group had an average brain age of 2.3 years higher than their chronological age. The brain age of the patients with poorly controlled diabetes was, on average, 4 years higher.
The data showed that people who are physically active and don't smoke or drink excessive alcohol are less likely to experience accelerated brain aging.
“The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the population is high and increasing,” Dove said. “We hope that our research will help prevent cognitive impairment and dementia in people with diabetes and prediabetes.”
