MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF ANTIDEMENTIA DRUGS IN PATIENTS WITH ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

A large number of experimental compounds are being developed for the t reatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). As different compo unds may have different effects on CNS function, depending on which ne urotransmitters they affect, adequate profiling will require the use o f several tests. The difficulties facing the psycho-pharmacologist in a clinical trial setting of dementia are numerous. Many of the current measures, particularly ratings scales, measure a complex range of var iables in the same instrument and this makes interpretation of results difficult. More objective measures are needed but these are often cho sen without regard to what the instrument measures in terms of psychol ogical function. Despite these difficulties the need to evaluate anti- dementia drugs will become increasingly important now that specific dr ugs for the treatment of AD have become available. It is likely that t he best strategy for evaluating such compounds will be via a test batt ery, comprising a range of instruments (psychometric, clinical and neu ropsychological) each measuring a clearly defined aspect of cognitive function. It may be time to rethink the evaluation of anti-dementia dr ugs from a psychopharmacological perspective and, in particular, to de velop more objective and quantitative measures to be used alongside mo re 'traditional' instruments. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.