Need to Recalibrate Research Outcomes in Alzheimer's Disease: Focus on Neuropsychiatric Symptoms.

OBJECTIVES

To determine whether neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) are adequately considered in clinical research on Alzheimer's disease (AD).

DESIGN

Systematic review.

SETTING

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) recruiting individuals with AD and published during the last 10 years in 16 major general medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and geriatric psychiatry journals and RCTs registered on clinicaltrials.gov and currently enrolling individuals with AD.

PARTICIPANTS

Individuals with AD.

MEASUREMENTS

Outcome measures adopted by the included studies.

RESULTS

Only 21.4% of the included studies identified through the bibliographic searches had measures of NPSs as a primary outcome. Only 17.7% of the studies retrieved on clinicaltrials.gov made a specific effort to test the effect of pharmacological or nonpharmacological interventions on NPSs.

CONCLUSION

These findings show how rarely previous and current research on AD has considered NPSs as primary research targets. Although these symptoms are widely recognized as the most-stressful and -challenging manifestations of dementia, they are addressed much less often than other research targets.