of interest to those that remembered where their glasses are.......
Pre-Diabetic Condition Linked to Memory Loss By Alison McCook
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Middle-aged and older adults with a condition that often precedes
diabetes appear to show signs of memory loss not visible in their peers without the condition,
researchers announced Monday.
In addition, people with insulin resistance--a loss of sensitivity to this key blood-sugar-
regulating hormone--tended to have a relatively small hippocampus, a region in the brain associated
with short-term memory.
"This (finding) might give baby boomers a motivation to get off their couches and on their
treadmills," said Dr. Antonio Convit of New York University and the Nathan Kline Institute for
Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York.
Although insulin resistance commonly results from excess weight and lack of exercise, most people
who have the condition don't know it, and may consider themselves to be perfectly healthy, Convit
told Reuters Health.
So while people may not be motivated to exercise and diet to improve their appearance, Convit said
he hoped that the thought that their lifestyle was affecting their memories, as well as the shape of
their brains, might do the trick. Past studies have suggested that full-fledged diabetes can also
put people at risk of memory problems.
In the new study, Convit and his team obtained their findings from brain scans, memory tests, and
tests of insulin resistance in 30 people without diabetes who were between 53 and 89 years old.
They reported their results in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
In an interview, the researcher explained that when people become resistant to insulin--a condition
also known as impaired glucose tolerance--they have trouble getting glucose (blood sugar) out of the
blood and into the tissues that need it.
During the test of glucose tolerance, Convit and his colleagues injected people with a
certain amount of glucose--roughly equivalent to two donuts' worth, Convit said--and took
many blood samples.
The authors discovered that people who had more trouble clearing glucose from their blood also
tended to perform less well during tests of short-term memory. Brain scans also revealed that the
size of the hippocampus tended to be smaller in people with insulin resistance.
Convit explained that the brain relies on glucose for fuel, and the hippocampus is especially
vulnerable to stress. People with insulin resistance are unable to bring glucose to where it
needs to go, he said, and a lack of fuel might affect how well the brain--in particular, the
hippocampus--develops.
Whether these memory problems are permanent or not remains unclear, he said. However, diabetics who
get their condition under control often also see an improvement in their memory, Convit noted, a
sign that reduced memory is also reversible in pre-diabetics.
For people who know or fear they are insulin resistant and "want to retain as much of their marbles
as possible," Convit recommended that they exercise and lose any excess weight--the best methods of
getting blood sugar under control, he noted.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2003;10.1073/pnas.0336073100.
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