Research
Hormonal
Intranasal insulin administration improves memory and cognitive function in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer's disease, particularly in non-ApoE4 carriers and women.
If you have early memory issues or MCI, ask your doctor about intranasal insulin. It is a nasal spray that may help improve memory and attention without causing low blood sugar. This treatment seems to work best for women and those who do not carry the ApoE4 gene variant. It is not a cure, but it may help manage symptoms.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
In mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early AD patients, acute intranasal insulin administration facilitates verbal memory recall. Nevertheless, ApoE4 carriers presented poorer verbal memory recall after the treatment... The same group described that chronic intranasal insulin doses enhanced selective attention, retention of new information, and functional status of MCI and early AD subjects... It was reported that women show better scores of cognitive improvement than men after the intranasal insulin treatment
Why this rating
Based on multiple clinical trials (some unpublished) and consistent preclinical data, though results vary by genotype (ApoE4).
Source
Insulin Resistance in Alzheimer's Disease
Laís S. S. Ferreira et al. · Frontiers in Neuroscience · 2018
DOI 10.3389/fnins.2018.00830
narrative_reviewCited 220×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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