Anton P. Porsteinsson, MD: The s-CitAD Study Design

"We’re also using that study to understand more the impact of a simple, straightforward, psychosocial intervention on people with agitation."

Anton P. Porsteinsson, MD, the Director of the University of Rochester Alzheimer's Disease Care, Research and Education Program, sat with NeurologyLive to discuss the currently ongoing s-CitAD Study, which is exploring s-citalopram in patients with Alzheimer who also have symptoms of agitation.

The study, uniquely, is seeking to determine the answers to several questions, including the obvious—identifying if s-citalopram is beneficial in patients with agitation and Alzheimer, who are the patients that are more likely to respond to s-citalopram versus placebo—but also the not-so-obvious—who are the patients that are going to respond to a non-pharmacological intervention? Porsteinssen noted that he and the investigator hope to find out the degree of improvement with a non-pharmacological intervention that’s can actually be applied in clinical practice.

To do that, the investigators are utilizing a 3-week lead-in in which patients will be given a psychosocial intervention in patients with Alzheimer disease who have a moderate-to-severe form of agitation. The patients that improve on that alone will then be transferred to an observational cohort that will be followed for observation, while those that do not improve will be randomized to either s-citalopram or placebo for a 12-week double-blind period.