Summary
The following articles present work towards establishing a consensus on the most suitable outcomes to be measured when assessing “disease modification” (or the lack of it) in response to interventions intended to delay or prevent the progress of dementia.
The ultimate aim of this work is to facilitate the design of trials and ensure greater consistency across disease modification trials. This work on standardisation is intended to make disparate trial results more comparable, and enable easier / more trustworthy performance of meta-analyses based on the data from future trials.
Reference
Webster, L. Groskreutz, D. Grinbergs-Saull, A. [et al] (2017). Core outcome measures for interventions to prevent or slow the progress of dementia for people living with mild to moderate dementia: Systematic review and consensus recommendations. PLoS One. June 29th 2017; 12(6): e0179521.
“More work is needed to address disease modification of the less common types of dementia”. (p.18).
The full-blown NIHR Health Technology Assessment:
Reference
Webster, L. Groskreutz, D. Grinbergs-Saull, A. [et al] (2017). Development of a core outcome set for disease modification trials in mild to moderate dementia: a systematic review, patient and public consultation and consensus recommendations. Health Technology Assessment. May 2017; 21(26): 1-192.
“We envisage that the core set may be superseded in the future, particularly for other types of dementia. There is a need to develop an algorithm to compare scores on the MMSE and ADAS-Cog”.
