Publication:

Association of duration of type 2 diabetes with short term and working memory

Background Type 2 diabetes mellitus has deleterious effects on brain resulting in loss of short term memory and working memory in elderly and poorly controlled diabetic patients. Less attention has been given to the effect of diabetes on cognitive functions. Hence, the study was undertaken to study the status of short term and working memory in type 2 diabetes mellitus and to correlate it with the duration of diabetes.

Methods Study was conducted in Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences, Jalandhar, India, on 100 diabetic patients in the age group of 40-60 years. Short term memory and working memory was assessed using 4 memory tests. AVLT and VFT for short term memory and WDST and VST for working memory. The results expressed in average of total scores. One-way ANOVA followed by post hoc (t) test were used for statistical analysis.

Results Short term memory and working memory status was negatively correlated with duration of diabetes. Diabetics more than 55 years showed greater cognitive decline compared to younger age group.

Conclusions The short term and the working memory status decreased significantly in diabetic patients, which may be due to age of onset, duration, vascular dementia, hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia. These effects observed that duration, sex, age and blood glucose levels are of clinical importance as short term and working memory loss could have important practical implications for daily activities.