Atenção e comportamento inibitório em adolescentes com diabetes tipo 1

Abstract

Background : Diabetes Mellitus is a worldwide epidemic of increasing incidence and high morbidity and mortality. Although diabetic neuropathy is the most common neurological complication, the knowledge that there is an involvement of the central nervous system is increasing, especially in relation to cognitive changes. Aims: To investigate with two simple, inexpensive, rapid, objective and easy-to-apply tasks, differences between patients with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) and controls in outcome measures of attention and impulsivity, key-executive function components traditionally assessed by subjective and long questionnaires of difficult reproducibility that require trained psychologists; to correlate the alterations with clinical characteristics; to explore correlations between the tasks. Methods: We compared the scores of 20 T1DM to 20 controls, both sexes, aged 12 to 15 years, using a Go-NoGo and a Maze task, and verified correlations between them. Results: T1DM group had more anticipatory answers (AA) in Go-NoGo task (p<0,05) and made more direction changes in Mazes (p<0,01). There was correlation between non-severe hypoglycaemias and AA (p=0,01), and between severe hypoglycaemias and number of touches in Mazes’ walls (p<0,05). HbA1c>9% correlated to a greater number of alleys in Mazes (p<0,05). The tasks’ parameters were coherent among each task and between them. Conclusions: We found indicators of inattention and impulsivity coexisting in T1DM, the first more related to hyperglycaemia and the later to hypoglycemia. Further research is needed to study diabetes-associated cognitive decline with more objective parameters and evaluate the reliability and psychometric properties of the tasks herein proposed.