The burden of diabetes-related complications is expanding, with emerging evidence highlighting increased mortality from dementia among individuals with diabetes. At the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2025, a multi-country analysis assessed age- and sex-specific trends in dementia mortality in adults with and without diabetes. 

Aggregated mortality data were collected from seven jurisdictions—Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Scotland, and Alberta and Ontario from Canada—over approximately 20 years. Poisson regression models were used to estimate mortality rates and rate ratios for men and women aged 60, 70, 80, and 90 years. A total of 114,559 dementia deaths among individuals with diabetes and 589,706 deaths among those without diabetes were analyzed over more than 61 and 1,165 million person-years of follow-up, respectively. 

Results revealed that dementia mortality increased with age, with adults aged 80 and 90 years showing the most pronounced rise. In several jurisdictions, the increase was consistently higher in adults with diabetes compared to those without diabetes, with Scotland exhibiting rises of up to 51 percent per five-year interval in women. These findings suggest that improved diabetes management could play a key role in reducing dementia-related mortality in older adults.