On 4 March, researchers from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) published an article on the differences in Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related outcomes depending on the profile of type 2 Diabetes treatment in the journal Diabetes Care.
The researchers drew on information from 1,289 dementia-free ADNI participants, out of which 900 underwent a lumbar puncture and provided the study with information on AD-related biomarkers (including levels of phosphorylated tau (p-tau), total-tau (t-tau) and β-amyloid, which are connected to the development of AD-dementia).
Information on 331 participants who progressed to dementia was available after follow-ups of participants (up to 120 months succeeding initial assessment). The researchers then grouped participants’ information into four groups, differentiating between those who initially had normal blood glucose levels (762 participants), people who had a fasting blood glucose of 100-125 mg/dL classified as “prediabetes” (353 participants), people with diabetes that did not take treatment (78 participants), as well as people with diabetes who received treatment (96 participants).
The researchers noted, that the untreated group of people with diabetes progressed more rapidly towards dementia and exhibited higher levels of the AD biomarker p-tau than participants with normal glucose levels.
Furthermore, they suggested that since participants with treated diabetes seemed to not differ from people with normal glucose levels as well as those with prediabetes, pharmacotherapy for type 2 diabetes might have attenuated the risk for diabetes-associated dementia.
Nevertheless, the team also reported on the limitations of their study, explaining that due to the nature of the ADNI study, the studied group may not be representative of the aging population with diabetes. In addition, they stated that it is not possible to determine the effect of diabetes treatment on AD due to the observational nature of their study.
Future research through clinical trials is therefore be needed to shed further light into this, preferably with enough power to analyse for sex differences, provided the samples are large enough to reach the needed statistical power.
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2019/02/25/dc18-1399