Glucose regulation, in both patients with diabetes and nondiabetes patients, has been shown to be associated with neuropsychological function, particularly episodic memory. The main purpose of this study was to examine this association in a large sample of young nondiabetic adults, using a repeated-measures design in which participants were assessed under both, glucose and saccharin conditions. Regression analyses revealed that glucoregulatory indices based on evoked glucose levels significantly predicted the verbal memory performance of 135 young adults, independent of demographic and vascular risk factors. Repeated multiple analyses of variances using cognitive measures by function as dependent variables revealed that worse glucose regulators showed poorer verbal memory performance compared to better glucose regulators, with the performance of average glucose regulators falling in between. There was no effect of solution nor did gender interact with glucose regulation. Although worse regulators showed evidence of hyperinsulinemia, glucoregulatory indices calculated on the basis of insulin levels or fasting glucose levels were less sensitive to cognitive variability relative to indices based on evoked glucose levels. Cardiovascular risk factors were indeed associated with hyperinsulinemia, however, these did not predict cognitive performance in this young group. These results were discussed in light of medial temporal lobe functions, including encoding and retrieval of information, and appear to be mediated by changes in lipid metabolism, insulin receptor distribution and function, and/or genetic susceptibility.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29384 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Awad, Nesrine |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 216 p. |
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