An experimental drug that mimics the hunger hormone may offer protection against Alzheimer’s disease, an animal study shows.

In the study, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers found that the drug, which is a ghrelin antagonist, reduced memory loss in mice engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like disease. Ghrelin is the body’s hormonal response to hunger, and this drug magnifies its effect.

Previously the team had found that a the drug protected the animals against memory loss but his new study expands upon that research by including a possible risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, the high-glycemic diet.

A high-glycemic (high-GI) diet includes sugary foods and is linked to the diabetes, a disease that increases Alzheimer’s risk.

The researchers wanted to test their earlier results in a “worst-case” scenario so they compared to the mice fed with a normal diet or high-GI diet only in an experiment in which they had been trained to find their way in a water maze.

They found the test mice fed with the drug and a high-GI diet performed better in a water maze test compared to the mice fed with a normal diet or high GI diet only.