Introduction

There is now a concerted push in the research community to find pharmacological and/or non-pharmacological interventions that can prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer disease. But prevention trials promise to be long and potentially costly affairs. In a supplement in the October-December 2006 Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, Steven Ferris and colleagues outlined the bones of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) Prevention Instrument Project, which addresses the cost and burden associated with AD prevention trials.

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Steven Ferris, Doug Galasko, Marian Patterson, David Salmon, Mary Sano, Lon Schneider, Peter Whitehouse, and colleagues led this Webinar on 12 March 2007. Readers are invited to submit additional comments by using our Comments form at the bottom of the page.

Background

Background Text
By Tom Fagan

There is now a concerted push in the research community to find interventions that can prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer disease. But because AD develops so slowly in most people, and affects only a minority of people under the age of 85, prevention trials are bound to be large, long, and costly affairs. Part of that cost will be consumed by regular cognitive testing, currently an expensive procedure. Some of these tests also place considerable strain on trial volunteers, threatening to limit recruitment and increase dropout rate. In a supplement in the October-December 2006 Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, Steven Ferris and colleagues outlined the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) Prevention Instrument Project, which addresses the need to reduce the burden and cost of prevention trials. The ADCS PI Project is currently evaluating instruments that could be used for home-based assessment during clinical trials. The premise is that such home-based instruments, conducted via phone or through questionnaire, should be considerably cheaper than clinic-based assessments and should also be less burdensome on patients, caregivers, and clinical staff.

The supplement addresses instruments for assessing six domains: cognition, behavior, activities of daily living, global change, quality of life, and resource use. In this live Webinar, Steven Ferris, Doug Galasko, Marian Patterson, David Salmon, Mary Sano, Lon Schneider, Peter Whitehouse, and colleagues gave an overview of the Prevention Instrument Project. Some of the topics covered in the supplement and up for discussion were

  • Assessment of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living for Community-dwelling Elderly Individuals in Dementia Prevention Clinical Trials
  • ADCS-Clinicians’ Global Impression of Change Scales (ADCS-CGIC), Self-rated and Study Partner-rated Versions
  • Development of a Brief Verbal Memory Test for Primary Prevention Clinical Trials
  • Behavioral Measures in Primary Prevention Trials
  • The Mail-in Cognitive Function Screening Instrument (MCFSI)
  • Quality of Life Assessment (QOL)
  • Pharmacoeconomics: Assessing Health-related Resource Use Among Healthy Elderly
  • Pilot Testing of a Book Club as a Psychosocial Intervention and Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Alzforum is extremely grateful to Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins for allowing us to reproduce graphs and figures that appeared in the October-December 2006 supplement.

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References

Webinar Citations

  1. ADCS Prevention Instrument Project

Other Citations

  1. View Presentation

External Citations

  1. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins
  2. PC
  3. Mac

Further Reading

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