A drug used to treat type 2 diabetes has been found to lower the risk of dementia by more than one third, according to a new study.
Published in the BMJ, the research suggests that the medicine, called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors, may lower the risk of dementia by 35%.
According to the NHS, there are more than 944,000 people in the UK who have dementia. The number of people with the condition globally is expected to reach 153 million by 2050.
Type 2 diabetes is one of 14 risk factors associated with a greater risk of developing dementia. Other factors include smoking tobacco, physical inactivity, untreated vision loss and high levels of bad cholesterol.
Lower dementia risk
The team looked at data from more than 220,000 type 2 diabetics between the ages of 40 and 69 on the Korea national health insurance service who did not already have dementia.
Half of the participants were taking SGLT-2 inhibitors, which reduce the amount of glucose the kidneys reabsorb. The other half were taking dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors. These block the enzyme responsible for increasing insulin levels after eating food.
‘Its key finding that one of these drugs, SGLT-2 inhibitors, appears to be linked to a lower dementia risk, is promising and now needs to be confirmed in robust clinical trials.’
Dr Jacqui Hanley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK
They found that the SGLT-2 inhibitors were associated with a 35% lower risk of dementia compared with DPP-4 inhibitors. With patients taking SGLT-2 inhibitors, they also calculated a 39% reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease and a 52% reduced risk for vascular dementia.
Dr Jacqui Hanley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, called the findings ‘promising’ but called for clinical trials to confirm the results.
‘Its key finding that one of these drugs, SGLT-2 inhibitors, appears to be linked to a lower dementia risk, is promising and now needs to be confirmed in robust clinical trials,’ she said.
‘It will also be important to investigate the mechanisms behind this apparent effect, as this could give researchers clues for other treatment approaches.
‘It is encouraging to see large studies exploring whether drugs that have already been licensed could be repurposed as dementia treatments. Since these drugs have already been shown to be safe for use in people, this could potentially speed up the process of testing them in clinical trials against dementia, as well as making it significantly cheaper.’
‘Quirk of the study’
However Professor William Whiteley, associate director at the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, urged for caution. He said: ‘If this study were true, then SGLT-2 inhibitors would almost halve the risk of some types of dementia, which is much larger than the effect of medicines to reduce dementia progression, or medicines to prevent heart attack and stroke.
‘Instead, a quirk of the study design has probably given this result.
‘There are ongoing randomised trials of some diabetes medicines for dementia progression. The results of these trials will give more reliable answers.
‘The authors have interpreted their results cautiously.’
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