Glucose enhancement of memory in patients with probable senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type.

Attempts to attenuate the severe memory deficits in patients with SDAT have been largely unsuccessful, particularly in patients at advanced stages of the disease. Recent evidence indicates that glucose administration enhances memory in generally healthy aged rodents and humans. The present experiment demonstrates that glucose administration improves memory in moderately to severely demented patients with probable SDAT. Glucose ingestion significantly enhanced performance on several tests including orientation, word recognition and recall, narrative prose, and face recognition after glucose ingestion. Thus, the results extend enhancement of memory with glucose from generally healthy rodent and human populations to patients with probable SDAT.