Enriching Recruitment Through Identification of Episodic Memory Deficits at Pre-Screening

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) trials require participants with a specific biomarker and cognitive profile, targeting particular disease severity (e.g. prodromal vs MCI vs AD). Finding participants for clinical trials in the ‘pre-clinical’ or ‘prodromal’ stage of Alzheimer’s disease prior to the onset of cognitive and functional decline can be challenging, time-consuming and expensive. Episodic memory tasks such as CANTAB Paired Associates Learning (PAL), are associated with AD biomarkers, hippocampal and temporal-frontal network function (de Rover 2011, Nathan 2017) and may therefore be useful for pre-screening.

This study aimed to assess the utility of CANTAB PAL to: 

A. enrich samples for amyloid-positive participants, and 
B. identify deficits in other commonly used cognitive tasks such as CERAD learning and delayed recall.

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Tags : patient recruitment | screening | patient screening | episodic memory | cognitive deficits