Medicine and Health related Information

According to a recent study conducted it was found that diabetes can increase the risk of alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia.  The study was conducted on more than 13,000 swedish twins. It says that diabetics who are diagnosed with diabetes before the age of 65 are at more than double the risk of getting affected by alzheimer’s. However diabetic patients who are diagnosed with diabetes after the age of 65 are not in this zone.

According to American Diabetes Association nearly 24 million Americans are diabetic.

The study was conducted in karolinska institute, stockholm, Sweden, by Weili xu and his colleagues. He further says that his findings offer one more reason for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle so as to avoid problems of dementia in later part of their life.

The study began in 1998 and all the participants were atleast 65 when the study began. The study lasted till 2001.

Among all the participants 467 were diagnosed with dementia and 292 of them were diagnosed with alzheimer’s. Diabetic participants were about 1,396.

“Twins provide naturally matched pairs, in which confounding factors such as genetics and childhood environment may be removed when comparisons are made between twins”. co-author Margaret Gatz, PhD, professor of psychology, gerontology, and preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and foreign adjunct professor of medical epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet, says in a news release.