Older Class of Type 2 Diabetes Drugs Linked to 22% Reduced Dementia Risk

 For discussion with your doctor.

Your risk of dementia, has your doctor told you of this?

1. A documented 33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study?   May 2012.

2. Then this study came out and seems to have a range from 17-66%. December 2013.`    

3. A 20% chance in this research.   July 2013.

4. Dementia Risk Doubled in Patients Following Stroke September 2018 

What is your doctor's EXACT PROTOCOL TO PREVENT DEMENTIA?

Older Class of Type 2 Diabetes Drugs Linked to 22% Reduced Dementia Risk

Among patients with type 2 diabetes, use of thiazolidinediones (TZDs) was linked to a 22% reduced risk of dementia, according to a study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care.

These drugs may effectively prevent dementia in patients at high risk with mild or moderate type 2 diabetes, and may now be worth prioritising in future clinical studies to see if they can be repurposed, according to Jin J. Zhou, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, and colleagues. 

For the current study, the researchers drew on the electronic health records of 559,106 people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes from the national Veteran Affairs (VA) Health System. All patients were aged at least 60 years and were given a first prescription of metformin, or a sulfonylurea (tolbutamide, glimepiride, glipizide, or glyburide), or a TZD (rosiglitazone or pioglitazone) between January 2001 and December 2017. Their health was tracked for an average of nearly 8 years.

After at least 1 year of drug treatment, use of a TZD alone was associated with a 22% lower risk of dementia from any cause, compared with the use of metformin alone. Specifically, it was associated with an 11% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease and a 57% lower risk of vascular dementia.

Given that vascular diseases increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, TZDs may also help to reduce dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in part through their favourable effects on the vascular system, the authors said. 

While the risk of dementia from any cause was 11% lower for the use of metformin and TZD combined, it was 12% higher for the use of a sulfonylurea drug alone, prompting the researchers to suggest that supplementing a sulfonylurea with either metformin or a TZD may partially offset these effects. 

Further in-depth analysis indicated that those aged younger than 75 years benefited more from a TZD than older patients, highlighting the importance of early prevention for dementia.

The authors noted that the study was observational, so definitive conclusions can’t be drawn about cause and effect. They also acknowledged that certain potentially influential information wasn’t available, including kidney function and genetic factors, and that study participants were predominantly male and White. They suggest that future studies for repurposing diabetes drugs for dementia prevention might want to consider prioritising TZDs, based on their findings.

Reference: https://drc.bmj.com/content/10/5/e002894 

SOURCE: BMJ