Objective: This study aimed to investigate the impact of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) on the development of dementia in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: Growing evidence suggests that T2DM influences the clinical phenotype and progression of PD. However, the association of T2DM and dementia in PD is unclear.

Method: We examined 107,746 individuals (aged ≥60 years) without PD and dementia using the database of the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS)-Senior cohort. A multi-state model was used to estimate the point and interval of relative risk for T2DM on developing PD and dementia with adjustment for potential confounding factors.

Results: In during the follow-up period (13 years), a total of 2,518 and 13,369 individuals were diagnosed with PD and dementia, respectively. A total of 696 out of 2,518 PD patients (27.6%) developed dementia with the mean follow-up of 50 months from PD diagnosis. There is strong evidence suggesting that higher risk of dementia is associated with the presence of T2DM for PD patients (RR = 1.49; 95% CI: 1.34, 1.64; p<0.001). However, there is no significant effect of T2DM on developing PD (RR = 1.20, 95% CI: 0.95, 1.53; p=0.12) and dementia (RR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.55, 1.37; p=0.54) for individuals without PD.

Conclusion: Our study results suggest that T2DM is an important determinant of progression to dementia in elderly patients with PD. Further research is warranted to determine whether optimal management of T2DM can modify the risk of dementia in PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/association-of-type-2-diabetes-and-dementia-in-elderly-patients-with-parkinsons-disease-a-population-based-study-in-korea/