Publication:

Cognitive impairment in diabetes mellitus: an exploratory study

Background Present study was conducted to estimate the prevalence and evaluate predictors of cognitive function impairment in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Methods This prevalence study was conducted over one year at a tertiary care teaching hospital in central India. Known cases of type 2 diabetes mellitus of more than one year of duration of illness were considered eligible. Patients with past history of head injury, seizure episode, stroke, chronic kidney disease, those taking antidepressant/antipsychotic treatment and those with pre-existing dementia were excluded. Mini-mental state examination was employed for estimation of the cognitive function. Clinical history, examination and biochemical findings were also evaluated.

Results In all, total 332 patients with mean age of 61.33±11.33 years were studied. Two hundred patients (60.24%) were below 60 years, and 132 patients (39.76%) were over 60 years of age. Two hundred sixteen patients (65.06%) were males, and 116 (34.96%) were females. The mean duration of diabetes mellitus (DM) was 10.17±4.81 years. The mean MMSE score was 22.69±5.26 and 81 (24.4%) patients were observed to have cognitive impairment. The difference in cognitive function between those below 60 years and above 60 years was statistically significant (p=0.0214). Duration of illness was also a significant factor (p=0.0394). But gender was not observed to affect the cognitive function significantly (p=0.2497).

Conclusions Cognitive impairment is common amongst diabetics and is directly related to age and duration of diabetes amongst them; while gender does not influence the cognitive function amongst diabetics.