Research shows that a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes can significantly reduce the risk of dementia.
It is known that people with type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of developing dementia. The longer the diabetes lasts or the more severe the diabetes is, the greater the risk.
Researchers found that people who took sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors to treat diabetes had their risk of dementia reduced by up to half compared to people who did not.
While the findings are preliminary, the results suggest that repurposing existing drugs has “enormous potential” to help reduce the risks of other diseases.
Researchers analyzed data from 110,885 people with type 2 diabetes aged 40 to 69 who were members of the Korean National Health Insurance Service.
They looked at patients taking SGLT-2 inhibitors, which reduce the amount of glucose (sugar) reabsorbed by the kidneys, allowing it to be removed from the body in urine.
People with type 2 diabetes are known to be at increased risk of developing dementia, with the risk increasing the longer or more severe their diabetes is.
Diabetes is now a ‘rapidly escalating crisis’ in the UK, as the number of people with the condition is estimated to have passed five million.
These were then compared with patients given dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors, also known as gliptins, which work by blocking an enzyme that helps the body raise insulin levels after eating.
During the average follow-up of about two years, 1,172 people received a new diagnosis of dementia.
Overall, the rate of dementia was 35 percent lower in patients taking SGLT-2 inhibitors compared with patients taking other medications.
In patients with vascular dementia, this percentage rose to 52 percent and in patients with Alzheimer’s disease even to 39 percent, according to the findings published in the BMJ.
Researchers suggest that the risk decreases the longer someone takes the drugs. They suspect that it may affect inflammation in the brain, thereby reducing the risk of cerebrovascular disease or modulating glucose metabolism in the brain.
Further “robust clinical trials” are now needed to determine whether this could be a viable treatment in the future, the researchers said.
Dr Jacqui Hanley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: ‘It is encouraging to see large studies being conducted into whether already approved drugs could be repurposed as dementia treatments.
‘Since these drugs have been shown to be safe for use in humans, this could speed up the process of testing them in clinical trials against dementia and make them significantly less expensive.’
She added: ‘More broadly, the idea of repurposing existing drugs to treat diseases that cause dementia has enormous potential.’
It came a week after regulators gave the green light to the first drug shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, but refused to approve lecanemab for use in the NHS on cost grounds.
Professor William Whiteley, professor of neurology and epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, warned that the findings could be due to a “quirk in the study design”.
He said: ‘People with diabetes have a higher risk of dementia, so it is important to find drugs that reduce this risk.
‘Unfortunately, you can never be sure whether a drug works by looking at medical data alone.’