Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials require the enrollment of two people: a participant and a study partner. Study partners play critical roles for trial success. Yet, little is known about the impact of study partners, especially in trials that enroll individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). At this year’s Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) conference in Boston, Navneet Hakhu from the Grill/Gillen lab presented data about who study partners are in these important clinical trials. He showed that the prevalence of adult child and other dyads was much lower than that of spousal dyads. But importantly, these adult child and other dyads were much more likely than spousal dyads to be from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Increasing participation of these groups is a major imperative in AD trials and research more broadly, and these results suggest that lowering barriers to non-spousal dyad participation may be key to such improvements. The results are currently under consideration for publication.
