Does Diabetes Cause Alzheimer’s Disease?
That’s the question researchers in Sweden are pondering after the findings of a recent study indicate that individuals diagnosed with mid-life diabetes are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease later in life. Lead researcher Elina Rönnemaa, MD, of the Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and her colleagues followed a group of 2,269 Swedish men for 32 years to track any connection between insulin problems at age 50 and dementia later. She found 102 men had developed Alzheimer’s disease, 57 had developed vascular dementia, and 235 more had other forms of dementia and cognitive impairment. It was the men who were found to have low levels of insulin secretion, signaling diabetes, at age 50 who were one and on-half times more likely to be diagnosed later with Alzheimer’s disease. Other risk factors were considered – blood pressure, body mass index, cholesterol, and education – but it was the low insulin secretion that proved to have the most significant impact on the developm
