Could a Diabetes Drug Help Stave off Alzheimer’s?

A new study in the journal Neuroscience shows that patients taking a class of diabetes drug known as gliptins may help stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

“This new research looked at a particular class of diabetes drugs called dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP-4i), also known as gliptins. Using retrospective data the researchers compared brain scans and cognitive test results from 70 diabetic patients taking DPP-4i against 71 diabetic patients not taking DPP-4i and 141 non-diabetic subjects. The entire cohort had an average age of 76 and all showed early signs of Alzheimer’s disease based on cognitive tests and PET scans.

All subjects were followed for around six years to measure decline over time and cognitive scores were similar in all groups at the start of the study. At the end of the study period, those diabetic patients on DPP-4i drugs showed significantly slower rates of cognitive decline compared to both other groups.”

The results are very preliminary, but the findings seem to be strong enough to warrant a large-scale study into these effects.

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