Racial and ethnic associations with behavioral symptom evaluation

 
   Lead Investigator:    Joshua Grill
   Institution      :    U California, Irvine
   E-Mail           :    jgrill@uci.edu
   Proposal ID      :    974



   Proposal Description:
   Background:  A previous study on four multinational Alzheimer?s disease (AD) clinical trials found that patients? behavioral symptoms, as rated by informants using the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI), differed significantly among global regions. Specifically, NPI scores were lower in Asian countries and Japan, compared to North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Australia/South Africa. These findings were striking, since not only did the trial inclusion criteria intend to ensure consistent patient disease severity across regions, measures of disease severity were just as severe in Asia and Japan as other global regions.                                                     Purpose:  In this study, we propose using data from National Alzheimer?s Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set (NACC UDS) to examine whether the finding observed in the previous study occurs in varying races and ethnicities in a sample of North American AD patients. We will measure the association between study partner ethnicity and NPI scores, controlling for a variety of covariates such as disease severity, informant relationship to the patient, co-morbidities and concomitant medications.