| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| Overview of methodologic issues for pharmacologic trials in mild, moderate, and severe Alzheimer's disease | | Author(s) | Barry Reisberg, Emile H Franssen, Maciej Bobinski |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 8, no 2, Summer 1996 |
| Pages | pp 159-193 |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Drugs ; Clinical surveys ; Methodology ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | The use of terminology from screening instruments scores from measures such as the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) has led to the treatment of patients with severe Alzheimer's disease (AD) being neglected. This article suggests staging as an alternative approach to the classification of AD severity. This approach has advanced to the point where moderately severe and severe AD can be described in detail. Procedures for describing this previously neglected latter stage of AD have recently been extensively validated. Staging is also uniquely useful at the other end of the severity spectrum, in differentiating early ageing brain or behaviour changes, incipient AD, and mild AD. Temporally, with staging procedures, it is possible to track the course of AD approximately three times more accurately than with the MMSE. The net result of the advances in AD delineation is that issues such as prophylaxis, modification of course, treatment of behavioural disturbances, loss of ambulation, progressive rigidity, and the development of contractures in AD patients can now be addressed in a scientifically meaningful way that will hopefully bring benefit to AD patients and those who care for them. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980303253 A |
| Classmark | EA: LLD: 3G: 3D: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|