Global Mapping of Interventions to Improve Quality of Life of Patients with Alzheimer's Disease during 1990-2018

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) with its high burden on disability is known as one of the critical public health issues worldwide. Hence, providing comprehensive care and effective symptomatic treatment are becoming a challenge for many healthcare systems. Quality of life (QOL) has been identified as an important indicator to develop holistic care for people living with AD since it reflects treatment response, the progression of AD, and activities of daily living. This study aimed to identify research trends and landscapes as well as important factors in QOL studies in the field of AD.

Summary: English research was extracted from the online database Web of Science to analyze research publications' growth rate and content on AD and QOL. VOSviewer was used to visualize the correlations between terms in titles and abstracts. Research topics were created using Latent Dirichlet Allocation of abstracts' content and disciplines. Major landscapes in the QOL assessment included care and treatment for AD in epidemiological studies and clinical trials. Besides, most studies were conducted in high-income countries, such as the USA or the United Kingdom. Findings of our study also identified a lack of contextualized factors and research gaps in terms of QOL among individuals with AD. Key Messages: Further studies should be conducted taking an effort to assess QOL among demented patients as well as advancing knowledge, attitude, and practice among family caregivers.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Content analysis; Interventions; Quality of life; Scientometrics; Text mining.