Diabetes may shrink brain by two years in a decade

What has diabetes to do with your brain? Well, it may shrink your brain by two years every decade, an alarming research has indicated.

It is the first such study linking diabetes to a change in the size of the brain.

"Our research found that patients having more severe diabetes had less brain tissue, suggesting brain atrophy," said R. Nick Bryan, a professor of radiology at University of Pennsylvania's Perleman School of Medicine.

They did not seem to have more vascular disease due to the direct effect of diabetes, Bryan added.

To find evidence, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to find the link between type 2 diabetes and brain structure in 614 patients.

The findings showed that longer duration of diabetes was associated with brain volume loss, particularly in the gray matter.

For every 10 years a patient has diabetes, their brain looks approximately two years older than that of a non-diabetic person in terms of grey matter volume.

However, they found no association of diabetes characteristics with small vessel ischemic disease in the brain, a Daily Mail report said.

This opens up a new pathway to treat patients with diabetes, the study concluded.