Executive functions in patients with Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and cognitively healthy older adults
Por:
Redondo MT, Beltrán-Brotóns JL, Reales JM and Ballesteros S
Publicada:
1 oct 2016
Ahead of Print:
21 jul 2016
Resumen:
Objectives: The present study investigated whether the performance on
executive function tasks of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus
(T2DM) is as impaired as that of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and
to compare their performance with that of a group of cognitively healthy
older adults. We also investigated whether glycosylated hemoglobin
levels (HbA1c, a measure of glucose regulation) are related to
performance on executive control tasks.
Methods: Three groups of participants (AD, T2DM, and healthy older
adults) completed medical and psychological evaluations and performed a
series of computerized tasks, including processing speed (simple and
choice reaction time) tasks, verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM)
updating (n-back) tasks, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), to
assess processing speed and executive functioning.
Results: As expected, the results showed that AD patients performed
significantly worse than the healthy older adult group in all tasks.
Executive functions deteriorated in the two groups of patients but more
in the AD group. The T2DM group differed from healthy older controls but
not from AD patients in the percentage of perseverations and the
percentage of perseverative errors (WCST).
Conclusions: These findings revealed working memory (updating and
maintenance) and executive control declines in the T2DM compared to
healthy older controls but smaller than that suffered by the AD
patients. The impairment of executive processing of T2DM patients
despite the glycosylated hemoglobin control suggests that these patients
are at risk of developing AD. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
Filiaciones:
:
Studies on Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Group, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
Conselleria de Sanitat, Valencia, Elche, Spain
:
Conselleria de Sanitat, Valencia, Elche, Spain
Ballesteros S:
Studies on Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Group, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain.
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