Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Updated : May 15, 2020 5:32 PM IST
If you can manage to keep people with prediabetes from developing type 2 diabetes, you will be able to reduce the risk of developing cognitive problems following a stroke. @Shutterstock
Diabetes is a debilitating disease that can cause stress in many organs of your body and also trigger many health conditions. Today, this is one of the most common disease across the globe thanks to a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy habits. Uncontrolled blood sugar levels can lead to heart disease, kidney failure and hypertension, which is one of the main reasons for strokes. Now, according to a new research at UNSW Sydney's Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), in Kensington, Australia, if you have type 2 diabetes, your risk of stroke and associated cognitive impairment is greater. You will also be at a greater risk of developing dementia.
But, researchers say, if you can manage to keep people with prediabetes from developing type 2 diabetes, you will be able to reduce the risk of developing cognitive problems following a stroke. Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association published this study.
For the purpose of the study, researchers tried to find out if stroke patients with prediabetes also have worse cognitive function compared to stroke patients without prediabetes or diabetes. They say that this is important because prediabetes is very common. In fact, they say, a person can have prediabetes for several years before progressing to type 2 diabetes. Early and aggressive treatment of prediabetes can delay or prevent type 2 diabetes. Hence, the question that researchers asked was if treating prediabetes could prevent the development of dementia in some individuals.
Therefore, they looked at data from 1,601 stroke patients. The average age of the participants was 66 out of which 63 per cent were male, 70 per cent Asian, 26 per cent white and 2.6 per cent African American. All the patients had participated in one of seven international studies from six countries and almost all of them had ischemic strokes. Researchers examined a variety of cognitive functions between three to six months after the stroke.
Researchers saw that, after adjusting for age, sex and education, compared to patients with normal fasting blood sugar, those with type 2 diabetes scored significantly lower in different areas of cognitive function, including memory, attention, speed of processing information, language, visual ability to copy or draw shapes or figures or lines, mental flexibility and executive functioning.
Patients with prediabetes did not score significantly worse than those with normal blood sugar in any areas of cognitive function.
The comparisons remained the same after researchers adjusted for additional factors like type of stroke, ethnicity, high blood pressure, smoking, previous history of stroke, abnormal heart rhythm and body mass index.
Researchers say that this same risk is not there in people with prediabetes. Therefore, it is essential to treat prediabetes in the initial stages itself. This will delay or prevent the progression to type 2 diabetes. However, prediabetes is often ignored or even not identified for many reasons. Therefore, you need to be alert for signs like unusual thirst, blurry vision, fatigue and frequent urination.
