Older adults with poorly controlled diabetes may struggle with what’s known as episodic memory, the ability to recall specific events experienced recently or long ago, a study suggests.Researchers examined results from a series of four memory tests done from 2006 to 2012 for 950 older adults with diabetes and 3,469 elderly people without the disease.
One limitation of the study is that researchers only checked A1c once, at the start of the study, the authors note. That makes it hard to say how shifts in blood sugar over time might have influenced any changes in memory. Researchers also lacked data on medications people took to control blood sugar, which makes it difficult to assess whether memory lapses might be averted in patients who took medications designed to manage diabetes, the authors also point out.Even so, the findings suggest that keeping blood sugar levels in a healthy range may help maintain memory performance over time, said Dr. Joe Verghese, director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for the Aging Brain in New York. “Patients with diabetes can experience several brain changes that develop over time such as shrinkage of areas involved in memory and thinking as well as damage to blood vessels supplying the brain,” Verghese, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Higher blood sugar levels may be detrimental for brain health even in older adults who do not meet formal criteria for diabetes but are in the gray zone.” People with diabetes also need to be aware that even if their blood sugar is well controlled, they’re still at increased risk for memory problems and impairments in cognitive function, said Mark Espeland, a researcher at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The best defense is avoiding diabetes in the first place, Espeland, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Taking steps to reduce one’s risk for diabetes is important to maintaining a healthy brain,” Espeland said. “These steps include an active lifestyle and avoiding obesity.”
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