J Korean Acad Community Health Nurs JKACHN Journal of Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing 1225-9594 2288-4203 Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing 10.12799/jkachn.2011.22.4.377 Original Article Diabetes and Cognitive Function in Community-Dwelling Older Adults Kim Yongsuk Full-time Lecturer, Department of Nursing, Daegu Haany University, Korea. Address reprint requests to: Kim, Yongsuk, Daegu Haany University, 25-gil 64, Suseong-ro, Suseong-gu, Daegu 706-060, Korea. Tel: 82-53-770-2283, Fax: 82-53-770-2286, kyss@dhu.ac.kr 12 2011 04 04 2014 22 4 377 388 12 07 2011 05 12 2011 06 12 2011 © 2011 Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing 2011 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Purpose

This study was to examine the relation between diabetes and cognitive function in older adults.

 Methods

Eighty community-dwelling patients with diabetes and 506 subjects without diabetes were studied with cognitive function test. Cognitive function was measured by Full-scale IQ, Basic IQ, Executive IQ, Attention Function Index, Working Memory Index, Language Function Index, Visuospatial Function Index, Memory Function Index, and MMSE-K1.

 Results

In model controlling for education, the diabetic group showed significantly lower scores than the non-diabetic group in in Full-scale IQ (p=.012), Basic IQ (p=.034), Executive IQ (p=.014), Attention Function Index (p=.002), Working Memory Index (p=.037), and Memory Function Index (p=.043). The diabetic and non-diabetic groups that were matched for gender, age, and education showed similar differences in 7 out of 9 cognitive measures. The impairments of Full-scale IQ and Memory Function Index in the diabetic group were, respectively, 2.7 and 2.8 times greater than that in the diabetic group.

 Conclusion

These results showed that diabetes should be considered to a factor of cognitive impairment in older adults.

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Demographic and Cognitive Characteristics of Older Adults With versus Without Diabetes (N=586)

†𝒙2-test.

Cognitive Function of Older Adults With versus Without Diabetes Adjusted for Education Level (ANCOVA results) (N=586)

Demographic and Cognitive Characteristics of Selected Older Adults With versus Without Diabetes (N=160)

†𝒙2-test.

Risk of Cognitive Impairments according to Diabetes Status (N=586)

Note. Impairments are defined as the bottom 10% in each variances.