Developing Type 2 Diabetes Before Turning 60 Could Double Your Risk of Dementia by 70, Study Claims

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association claims that people who develop type 2 diabetes before they turn 60 could double their chance of developing dementia in old age, reports the Daily Mail . The authors examined medical records from 10,095 people in Britain over an average of 32 years each from 1985 to 2019. They estimated that dementia at age 70 was twice as likely if someone had been diagnosed with diabetes a decade earlier, while the risk was also elevated for people who got the illness in their 60s. For persons with no diabetes at age 70, the baseline risk of having dementia was 8.9 per 1,000 person-years, and that rate rose to 18.3 for people diagnosed at age 59 or earlier. People diagnosed with diabetes between 60 and 64 had a 49 percent higher risk than if they did not have diabetes, with a rate of 13 per 1,000 person-years. The study suggested years of irregular insulin and glucose sugar levels in the brain can contribute to the development of dementia.