  Diabetes affects more than 425 million people worldwide, a scale approaching
pandemic proportion. Diabetes represents a major risk factor for stroke, and
therefore is actively addressed for stroke prevention. However, how diabetes
affects stroke severity has not yet been extensively considered, which is
surprising given the evident but understudied common mechanistic features of
both pathologies. The increase in number of diabetic people, in the incidence
of stroke in presence of this specific risk factor, and the exacerbation of
ischemic brain damage in diabetic conditions (at least in animal models)
warrant the need to integrate this comorbidity in pre-clinical studies of brain
ischemia to develop novel therapeutic approaches. Therefore, a better
understanding of the commonalties involved in the course of both diseases would
offer the promise of discovering novel neuroprotective pathways that would be
more appropriated to clinical situations. In this article, we will review the
relevant mechanisms that have been identified as common traits of both
pathologies and that could be to our knowledge, potential targets for both
pathologies.
