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Cholinesterase Inhibitors for Alzheimer Disease
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To the Editor: Dr Trinh and colleagues1 concluded that ChIs have a "modest" beneficial role in treating neuropsychiatric symptoms. Their results do not support these claims.
The trials included in the meta-analysis did not include patients with significant behavioral symptomatology. They were designed to enroll mildly to moderately impaired patients who could complete cognitive testing and who had no significant behavioral problems. Furthermore, some allowed use of various psychotropic medications, thereby potentially confounding the results.
Like observational studies, meta-analyses must be carefully designed and justified because of the high risk that arbitrary decision making will lead to biased results. However, the authors provide little explanation of their inclusion criteria or methods. For example, they aggregated trials of vastly different lengths, ranging from 6 to 52 weeks. Selection criteria were set such that only trials using 1 of 2 behavioral rating scales, or 1 of 2 scales of activities of daily . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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