Intensive lowering of blood pressure (BP) and lipids does not appear to reduce cognitive decline in patients with type 2 diabetes, initial results from a randomised prospective study have found. The trial was conducted at multiple centres in North America, and was one of the sub studies of the ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) trial. This set out to test the hypothesis that intensive reduction of blood glucose, BP and lipids would improve cardiovascular outcomes in diabetes. The glycaemic study arm with patients treated to tighter HbA1c targets was halted prematurely because of an excess of deaths compared with the control group. No benefits were seen in the other intervention arms, and this finding was consistent with other studies testing the same hypothesis, such as the ADVANCE study.