Conclusion
Participants with recently diagnosed AD receiving stimulation therapy retained cognitive function during the one-year follow-up as did also AD participants receiving standard care. Donepezil therapy had no additional effect on cognition. Our results need to be confirmed in future studies.
Abbreviations
AD: Alzheimer's disease; ADAS-cog: Alzheimer's disease Assessment Scale cognitive (Scale 0―70: increasing disability with increasing score); BI: Barthel Index (Scale 0―20 better function with increasing score); CDT: Clock Drawing Test; ChEI: Cholinesterase inhibitor; DSM-IV-TR: Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition; GP: General Practitioner; ICD-10: International classification of diseases 10th Revision; IQ-CODE: Informant Questionnaire-Cognitive Decline in the Elderly; MADRS: Montgomery and Aasberg Depression Rating (Scale 0―60 increasing depression by increasing number); MMSE: Mini-Mental State Examination (Scale 0―30 better function with increasing score); NPI: NeuroPsychiatric Inventory (Scale 0―144 increasing number of psychiatric symptoms by increasing number); NINCDS-ADRDA: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer Disease's and Related Disorders Assosiation; RCT: Randomised clinical trial; SD: Standard Deviation.
Authors' contributions
FA has initiated, coordinated and conducted this study in close co-operation with the scientific advisory board at The University of Tromsø. He has examined and diagnosed patients recruited both in general practice and by postal cognitive screening. He is also responsible for analyzing baseline data and analyzing the main results of the study. TE has been the main supervisor and member of the scientific advisory board, participating in all stages of this study; - planning, lecturing, collecting data, discussing results and writing. BS participated in the planning of the study, supervising implementation and analysis and has revised the manuscript. He is a member of the scientific advisory board. MV is a member of the scientific advisory board and has participated in diagnosing AD participants, and in revising this manuscript. DSH has participated in the data analysis, and has contributed significantly in drafting and writing of the paper. TW has supervised and verified the main statistical analyses and participated in the interpretation of the results. All authors have full access to all the data (including statistical reports and tables) and have approved the final version of the paper.
Funding
The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority, The National Centre of Rural Health at The University of Tromsø, Health and Rehabilitation, The Directory of Health and Social Welfare in Norway, The County Officer of Nordland and The Municipality of Steigen constituted the funding group. Pfizer delivered donepezil and placebo, but had otherwise no influence on the study design, data collection, analyses and publication.
Acknowledgement
We want to express our gratitude to the patients, nurses and general practitioners who participated and contributed to this study. We are grateful to the staff at the study centre in Steigen, Kristin Tverback, Merete Hjertø and Herdis Svendsen for daily administration, testing and monitoring. We want to thank Inger Sperstad and the Clinical Research Centre, University of Tromsø for randomizing patients and data support, Per Baadnes at the Institute of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø, for support with the screening procedure, and the staff at the pharmacy in Nordland Central Hospital for medical distribution. Finally we would like to thank our sponsors (See Funding) for necessary economic support and at last, but not least, the Scientific Advisory Board for their important methodological and clinical guidance. Professor Peter Langhorne, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, has contributed with constructive advices in outlining the manuscript. Permission to the acknowledgement is obtained from all the persons named above.
BMC Neurol. 2012;12(59) © 2012 BioMed Central, Ltd.
