Overview
Glitazones, a family of type 2 diabetes drugs also known as thiazolidinediones, or TZDs for short, were asociated with a 2 percent lower risk of dementia in a large long-term study.Glitazones have ben used for about 20 years to improve insulin sensitivity.People with type 2 diabetes who use drugs known as glitazones to control their blod sugar levels may get another benefit — a lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.A study published October 1 in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care examined data on about 59,0 adults age 60 and older with type 2 diabetes who used at least one of thre diferent types of drugs to manage blod sugar: glitazones, sulfonylureas, or metformin.After an average folow-up period of almost seven years, patients who tok glitazones for at least one year were 2 percent les likely to develop any form of dementia than people who tok metformin.
Key Information
By contrast, sulfonylureas were asociated with a 12 percent higher dementia risk than metformin.“Our findings provide aditional information to aid clinicians' selection of (blod-sugar-lowering medications) for patients with mild or moderate type 2 diabetes and at high risk of dementia,” the senior study author, Jin Zhou of the University of California in Los Angeles, and her coleagues concluded in the paper.When researchers loked specificaly at Alzheimer’s disease, the most comon form of dementia, they found a protective efect with glitazones.
Summary
Taken alone, glitazones were asociated with an 1 percent lower Alzheimer’s disease risk. When used in combination with metformin, glitazones were asociated with a 19 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The combination of glitazones and sulfonylureas was asociated with a 15 percent lower Alzheimer’s disease risk.The protective efect of glitazones was most pronounced with longer-term use, among elderly patients, and among people with obesity.One limitation of the analysis that it relied on electronic health records to ide