The Relationship Between Adult Neuropsychological Profiles and Diabetic Patients' Glycemic Control

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess, in relation to metabolic control, the cognitive, depressive, and anxiety symptoms among 40 adult patients (age: 18–60 years) with either type 1 (n = 28) or type 2 (n = 12) diabetes mellitus (DM1, DM2). Nineteen healthy subjects matched for age, gender, and education served as the control group. For most cognitive domains, no significant performance differences were found between subjects from the diabetic groups and control subjects. However, diabetes patients demonstrated reduced information processing accuracy along with impaired visual and verbal working memory performance. In addition, psychopathology scores were significantly elevated but did not reach the clinical criteria for depression or anxiety. Overall, there were no significant differences between diabetic subgroups, and no significant correlation was found between cognitive performance, psychopathology scores, and HbA1c values for either subgroup. Thus, patients with DM1 or DM2 may show mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment as well as subtle psychopathological symptoms. While cognitive impairments may be understood in terms of diabetes-associated cognitive dysfunction, psychopathological symptoms may also result from unsuccessful coping with high task demands in everyday life activities. The outcome of the current study underscores the importance of early clinical neuropsychological standardized assessment as well as the diagnosis of cognitive and psychopathological symptoms in adult patients with diabetes.

Key words:

• anxiety
• cognition
• depression
• Type 1 diabetes
• Type 2 diabetes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Thomas Göhringer for the help with data collection.

Notes

Note. DST = Digit Symbol Test; SPM = Raven Standard Progressive Matrices Test, WM = Short-Term and Working Memory TAP-WM1 = working memory one-back version; TAP-WM2 = working memory two back version.

For the visual search task, data (search times, in ms) for set size = 100 are shown. a: number of correctly cancelled targets; b: errors (%); c: response time (ms); d: number of correct items.

Significant differences between patient subgroups and normal subjects are indicated by ∗(p < 0.05) or ∗∗(p < 0.01).

We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.