Alzheimer’s Patients Without Spouses Are Less Represented in Clinical Trials

A new study suggests that people without a spouse are underrepresented in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials when compared to people with spouses. The study appears in the Dec. 19, 2012, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Nationwide, half of all unpaid Alzheimer’s disease caregivers are under the age of 50 and as many as 68 percent are the children, children-in-law or grandchildren of these patients,” says study author Joshua D. Grill, PhD, assistant professor of Neurology at the UCLA Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “In contrast, in our analyses, 67 percent of the 2,041 Alzheimer’s clinical trial participants had a spouse as their study partner. We found that there were several differences between people with spouse and adult child study partners that could affect the results of the trials and interpretations of those results.” For more information, click here to read the full release.