The importance of high quality trials of cognitive interventions in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Currently available treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are disappointing and their modest benefits do not reflect the increased understanding of the condition that has arisen from the last 50 years of research or the huge investments made by the pharmaceutical industry and academia in developing therapies. Cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine are evidence-based symptomatic treatments that offer benefits at the margins of clinical significance, but successive failures in trials of putative disease-modifying drugs have led researchers to investigate the potential efficacy of non-drug interventions. Exercise and cognitive-based interventions have received the most attention, but we are still a long way from understanding whether any can offer real benefit to patients with AD (Huntley et al., 2015).