14 DAY TRIAL // According to a team of researchers in the US, something as simple as a nasal spray can help improve people's memory and alleviate some of the symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease dementia and mild cognitive impairment.
The nasal spray in question, described in a paper in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, serves to deliver a compound dubbed insulin detemir, which researchers with the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center describe as a long-acting analogue of the hormone insulin.
In a series of experiments, the nasal spray was administered to a group of adults diagnosed with either mild cognitive impairment or mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease dementia. After having been made to sniff insulin detemir, the participants in this study were monitored over the course of several weeks.
Of the volunteers who participated in these experiments, those who were administered 40 international unit doses of the long-acting insulin analogue took just 21 days to experience a noteworthy improvement in their ability to make heads or Tails of verbal and visual cues, and retain new information.
“The study provides preliminary evidence that insulin detemir can provide effective treatment for people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s-related dementia similar to our previous work with regular insulin,” researcher Suzanne Craft commented on the outcome of this study.
Throughout the duration of the investigation, neither of the volunteers experienced any significant side effects associated with their being administered insulin detemir. The Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center specialists argue that this is a good enough reason to continue studying this compound.