Retrospective Bayesian Evidence of Null Effect in Two Decades of Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials

Article type: Short Communication

Authors: Costa, Tommaso^{a; b} | Manuello, Jordi^{a; b; *} | Cauda, Franco^{a; b} | Liloia, Donato^{a; b}

Affiliations: [a] GCS-fMRI, Koelliker Hospital and Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy | [b] FOCUS Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

Correspondence: [*] Correspondence to: Jordi Manuello, Department of Psychology, Via Verdi 10, 10124 Turin, Italy. Tel.: (+39) 011 670 39 24; E-mail: jordi.manuello@unito.it.

Abstract: Despite intense research on Alzheimer’s disease, no validated treatment able to reverse symptomatology or stop disease progression exists. A recent systematic review by Kim and colleagues evaluated possible reasons behind the failure of the majority of the clinical trials. As the focus was on methodological factors, no statistical trends were examined in detail. Here, we aim to complete this picture leveraging on Bayesian analysis. In particular, we tested whether the failure of those clinical trials was essentially due to insufficient statistical power or to lack of a true effect. The strong Bayes’ Factor obtained supported the latter hypothesis.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Bayesian statistics, clinical trial, drug development

DOI: 10.3233/JAD-220942

Journal: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, vol. 91, no. 2, pp. 531-535, 2023