Diabetes could result in increased memory loss in the ageing

Research from the United States has revealed that suffering from diabetes could lead to increased memory loss in older adults. The study, which was published in the journal Diabetes Care, showed that two molecules could be behind this problem, which also includes depression and other types of cognitive impairment, and which also offer biomarkers of altered vascular reactivity in the brain.
It was found that the two adhesion molecules (called sVCAM and sICAM) can cause brain inflammation, which in turn can trigger problems with blood vessels and, eventually, result in atrophy of brain tissue in older diabetic patients.
They also showed that brain tissue in the frontal and temporal areas responsible for key functions including verbal memory, decision-making and language was where the brain was most affected by such inflammation.
Vera Novak, a neurophysiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre who led the investigatio, commented “In our previous work, we had found that patients with diabetes had significantly more brain atrophy than did a control group.”
She added “In fact, at the age of 65, the average person’s brain shrinks about one percent a year, but in a diabetic patient, brain volume can be lowered by as much as 15 per cent.”