Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and cognitive dysfunction

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is a metabolic disorder arising from pancreatic dysfunction. For survival, a diabetic must rely upon an exogenous source of insulin to ensure cellular health. Hypoglycemia is a condition that may arise in IDDM patients in which more insulin than glucose is present in the body. Chronic, severe occurrences of this condition have been speculated to incur memory impairment in diabetics. This experiment sought to determine if diabetics performed differently from a non-diabetic population on a delayed matching memory task, and also if those diabetics experiencing hypoglycemia performed more poorly than other diabetics on this task. It was found that IDDM patients do not perform differently from non-diabetics on a matching task, and most diabetics did not perform more poorly than other patients on the same task. One diabetic experiencing severe, chronic hypoglycemia performed more poorly than other experiment participants, suggesting that hypoglycemia may, in fact, be related to memory impairment on this delayed matching task.