Thinking sweet: the relationship between diabetes cognitive dysfunction

With the aging of the population the prevalence of two common disorders is expected to rise: diabetes and dementia. It has been shown that people with diabetes are approximately 1.5 times more likely to experience cognitive decline and 1.6 more likely to develop frank dementia than people without diabetes. This appears to be due to a higher prevalence of both vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The aim of this review is to describe the importance of this relationship, the evidence supporting it, possible explanations, and the implications of this relationship for physicians caring for people with diabetes.