Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The association between diabetes (DM) and cognitive impairment is already well established. DM affects multiple superior domains, in primis working memory and executive functions and damages nervous system in both morphological and functional ways. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA) is a neuropsychological test defined as the best tool evaluating mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in DM.

Objective: Our study aimed to investigate a correlation between anthropometric variables and MoCAscores in an adult cohort of type 2 diabetic patients referring to our Internal Medicine offices between November 2018 and April 2019.

Material and Methods: We excluded subjects affected by diagnosed dementia, brain trauma or injuries, major adverse cardiovascular events during the previous 6 months or portal-systemic encephalopathy. We recruited 40 over 60 (75 ± 6.06 years) patients and collected their anthropometric, clinical and laboratory data and then they underwent MoCA testing, which score was corrected by school grade. In order to exclude MCI, minimum score was of 26.

Results: Participants had a MoCA average score of 21.6 (±4.7) over 30. Recall memory resulted the most affected cognitive domain (average 32%), while space-time orientation the least (average 96.7%). Although our cohort was limited by number, a significative statistic correlation between BMI and MoCA score emerged (r 0.329). We registered a progressive neuropsychological score increase with increasing BMI considering our population divided in tertiles by MoCA results, which was biologically significative according to the well-known obesity paradox. This correlation was confirmed even after correction for sex, age and years of diabetic disease.