Measuring treatment response in Alzheimer's disease clinical trials

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive disorder that negatively impacts cognitive, behavioral, and functional abilities. Because of the complex nature of this disease, it is crucial to design assessment procedures that accurately track disease progression across a wide variety of symptom domains. One important use of such techniques is to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic compounds in AD clinical trials. A number of outcome measures that assess cognitive, behavioral, functional, or global ability have been developed for this purpose. This paper describes the assessment measures that are most commonly used in AD trials. The inherent strengths and limitations of each evaluative technique are summarized, as well as how these outcome measures are useful to the practicing clinician.