OBJECTIVES: To describe the profile of medicines procurement for Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a Brazilian federal database.  METHODS: This study investigated procurement of medicines for AD in the Sistema Integrado de Administração de Serviços Gerais (SIASG). A profile of purchases, expenditures and prices from 2008 to 2013 was drawn. The following medicines used for treatment of AD — donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine and memantine — in several dosage forms were investigated, including those not present in the Brazilian guidelines (PCDT). The extracted information included date of purchase; quantity of units purchased; unit price; responsible body; form of acquisition (tendering or waivered emergency purchase) and justification for purchase (regular use or health litigation). Unit prices were deflated to December 2013 by the IPCA (Brazilian Pricing Index) to allow comparability and evaluation of trends.  RESULTS: More than 47 million units of medicines for AD were bought and expenditures reached 90.1 million reais, with rivastigmine purchases in the forefront. Medicines not present in the guidelines represented 3% of expenditures and purchases associated to health litigation were negligible. The Ministry of Defense was the largest buyer of medicines not included in the guidelines. Over the entire period, a reduction of corrected weighted average prices of PCDT and non-PCDT medicines was observed.  CONCLUSIONS: We noted a significant increase in the amount of medicine purchases over time. Updates on PCDT, changes in medicines financing and procurement, and the establishment of Productive Development Partnerships may have contributed with the scale-up of AD treatment availability. The reduction of lawsuits demanding medicines suggests normalization of medicine procurement mechanisms for these drugs. The resources consumed with non-PCDT medicines increased in the period.