People with diabetes have a higher risk of cognitive impairment than people
without diabetes, and recently it is being considered a complication of
diabetes mellitus (DM). Because of drastic lifestyle changes in the Mongolian
population, diabetes prevalence is increasing rapidly. The rapid increase of
diabetes prevalence and its poor control in Mongolia suggest that there might be
significant cognitive impairment in the diabetes population. In this
case-control study, we compared the Mini-Mental State Examination
score to the risk of cognitive impairment, indicating vascular
dementia in people with and without diabetes. Upon obtaining their informed
consent, each subject was tested with Mini-Mental State Examination. We involved age and gender-matched
diabetic (n = 131) and non-diabetic (n = 131) subjects. The mean age
was 61.3 8.5 and 61.0 8.7 in people with and without diabetes,
respectively, and 35.9% of the participants were male. According to study groups, the Mini-Mental State Examination scores were
significantly different: 26.1 3.7 and 27.5
2.6 for people with and without diabetes, respectively. In logistic
regression analysis, age was significantly associated with Mini-Mental State Examination score (Beta
coefficient = 1.22; 1.11–1.35, P 0.001) in people without diabetes
after adjustments for potential confounders. However, age was not significantly
associated with MMSE scores in people with diabetes mellitus. Thus, diabetes duration and poor control
may contribute to developing cognitive impairment in people with diabetes. In
conclusion, there might be a high prevalence of vascular dementia in people with
type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, since Mini-Mental State Examination is sensitive to dementia and not specific to vascular dementia, further studies involving neuroimaging and neurological examination are needed to fully elucidate the link between type 2 diabetes and vascular dementia in dementia in a Mongolian population.