Evaluation of Impacts of Concomitant Use of Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors and Memantine on Cognitive Decline in ADNI Data

• Activity Number: 571 - Special Topics and Case Studies in Clinical Trials
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, July 31, 2019 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biopharmaceutical Section
• Author(s): Hui Zheng* and Weining Robieson and Deli Wang and Hana Florian
• Companies: AbbVie Inc. and AbbVie Inc. and AbbVie and AbbVie

Abstract

Only symptomatic therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AchEIs) and memantine are currently available, and none of the drug interventions has an impact on disease progression, neuronal damage or death. We used Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimagine Initiative (ADNI) data to evaluate the association between concomitant use of AchEIs and/or memantine with cognitive decline in early AD patients. The evaluation is based on analyses of cognition and functional scales including Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Box (CDR-SB), Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (13 items) Cognition Portion (ADAS-Cog13), Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE), and Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ). The results show that patients who did not take these medications had better cognitive scores at baseline than those who did. In addition, patients who did not take these medications had slower decline in cognition over 2 years than those who did. The use of concomitant ACHEIs and/or memantine could be a potential confounding factor for treatment effect in clinical trials and should be specifically considered in clinical trial design and analysis stages.