Diabetes treatment said no threat to mental skills

BOSTON (Reuters) - Tightly controlling the blood sugar levels of diabetics, even with the attendant risk of dangerously low levels of blood glucose, does not damage mental abilities, researchers said on Wednesday.

Patients did not suffer in tests of intelligence, memory, coordination, language and other mental abilities, the researchers reported in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"It certainly helps decrease a worry that I get asked about a lot," Dr. Alan Jacobson of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

The study followed patients with type 1 diabetes for an average of 18 years, comparing the mental skills of 588 who received intensive treatment with 556 getting conventional care.

Those in the intensive care group were three times more likely to have had episodes of coma or seizures caused by low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia.

But "our study found no evidence of substantial long-term declines in cognitive function," the Jacobson team wrote.

This result should reassure people with diabetes, who fare better if their blood sugar is carefully kept in check.

Tightly controlling blood sugar levels decreases the risk of heart disease, kidney failure, nerve damage, blindness and other eye diseases.

"Patients often wonder whether recurrent hypoglycemia will lead to persistent problems in their ability to think or will have negative effects on school performance or future employability," they wrote.

Type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an auto-immune disease in which the body does not produce any insulin, most often occurring in children and young adults. People with type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin injections to stay alive.