ADSS: A Composite Score to Detect Disease Progression in Alzheimer's Disease

J Alzheimers Dis Rep. 2024 Feb 20;8(1):307-316. doi: 10.3233/ADR-230043. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Background: Composite scores have been increasingly used in trials for Alzheimer's disease (AD) to detect disease progression, such as the AD Composite Score (ADCOMS) in the lecanemab trial.

Objective: To develop a new composite score to improve the prediction of outcome change.

Methods: We proposed to develop a new composite score based on the statistical model in the ADCOMS, by removing duplicated sub-scales and adding the model selection in the partial least squares (PLS) regression.

Results: The new AD composite Score with variable Selection (ADSS) includes 7 cognitive sub-scales. ADSS can increase the sensitivity to detect disease progression as compared to the existing total scores, which leads to smaller sample sizes using the ADSS in trial designs.

Conclusions: ADSS can be utilized in AD trials to improve the success rate of drug development with a high sensitivity to detect disease progression in early stages.

Keywords: ADCOMS; Alzheimer’s disease; cognitive outcome; composite score; mild cognitive impairment; model selection.