It is known that type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for dementia, but the impact of diabetes and its early stages, known as prediabetes, on brain aging in individuals without dementia is unclear. A recent comprehensive brain imaging study indicates that both diabetes and prediabetes may be associated with accelerated brain aging.
The study involved over 31,000 individuals aged between 40 and 70 from the UK Biobank who had undergone a brain MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging). The researchers utilized a machine learning approach to calculate the brain age in comparison to the individual’s actual age.
Sure! Here’s the revised text:People with prediabetes were found to have brains that appeared 0.5 years older than their actual age, while those with diabetes had brains that appeared 2.3 years older. For individuals with poorly controlled diabetes, their brains looked more than four years older than their actual age. The researchers also observed that the difference between brain age and actual age slightly increased over time for people with diabetes. However, these associations were less pronounced in individuals with high levels of physical activity who did not smoke or consume large amounts of alcohol.
“Having a brain that appears older than one’s chronological age can indicate a deviation from the normal aging process and may serve as an early warning sign for dementia,” says Abigail Dove, the lead author of the study and a PhD student at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at the Karolinska Institutet. “On the positive side, it seems that individuals with diabetes may be able to positively influence their brain health through healthy living.”
Repeated MRI data were available for only a small percentage of the study participants. Follow-up MRI scans are ongoing, and researchers are now continuing to study the link between diabetes and brain aging over time.
“There’s a high and growing prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the population,” says Abigail Dove. “We hope that our research will help prevent cognitive impairment and dementia in people with diabetes and prediabetes.”