Introduction: Recruitment for Alzheimer's disease (AD) prevention research studies is challenging because of lack of awareness among cognitively healthy adults coupled with the high screen fail rate due to participants not having a genetic risk factor or biomarker evidence of the disease. Participant recruitment registries offer one solution for efficiently and effectively identifying, characterizing, and connecting potential eligible volunteers to studies. Methods: Individuals aged 55-75 years who live in the United States and self-report not having a diagnosis of cognitive impairment such as MCI or dementia are eligible to join GeneMatch. Participants enroll online and are provided a cheek swab kit for DNA extraction and apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotyping. Participants are not told their APOE results, although the results may be used in part to help match participants to AD prevention studies. Results: As of August 2018, 75,351 participants had joined GeneMatch. Nearly 30% of participants have one APOE4 allele, and approximately 3% have two APOE4 alleles. The percentages of APOE4 heterozygotes and homozygotes are inversely associated with age (P , .001). Discussion: GeneMatch, the first trial-independent research enrollment program designed to recruit and refer cognitively healthy adults to AD prevention studies based in part on APOE test results, provides a novel mechanism to accelerate prescreening and enrollment for AD prevention trials.

Background: Recruitment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-focused studies, particularly prevention studies, is challenging due to the public’s lack of awareness about study opportunities coupled with studies’ inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in a high screen fail rate. Objectives: To develop an internet-based participant recruitment registry for efficiently and effectively raising awareness about AD-focused study opportunities and connecting potentially eligible volunteers to studies in their communities. Methods: Individuals age 18 and older are eligible to join the Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry (APR). Individuals provide first and last name, year of birth, country, and zip/postal code to join the APR; for questions regarding race, ethnicity, sex, family history of AD or other dementia, and diagnosis of cognitive impairment, individuals have the option to select “prefer not to answer.” The APR website maintains a list of recruiting studies and contacts members who have opted in by email when new studies are available for enrollment. Results: As of December 1, 2019, 346,661 individuals had joined the APR. Members had a mean age of 63.3 (SD 11.7) years and were predominately women (75%). 94% were cognitively unimpaired, 50% reported a family history of AD or other dementia, and of those who provided race, 76% were white. 39% joined the APR as a result of a paid social media advertisement. To date, the APR helped recruit for 82 studies. Conclusions: The APR is a large, internet-based participant recruitment registry designed to raise awareness about AD prevention research and connect members with enrolling studies in their communities. It has demonstrated the ability to recruit and engage a large number of highly motivated members and assist researchers in meeting their recruitment goals. Future publications will report on the effectiveness of APR for accelerating recruitment and enrollment into AD-focused studies.

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Background:The Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium (AAC) created the Arizona Alzheimer’s Registry, a screening and referral process for people interested in participating in Alzheimer’s disease related research. The goals of the Registry were to increase awareness of Alzheimer's disease research and accelerate enrollment into AAC research studies. Methods: Participation was by open invitation to adults 18 and older. Those interested provided consent and completed a written questionnaire. A subset of Registrants underwent an initial telephone cognitive assessment. Referral to AAC sites was based on medical history, telephone cognitive assessment, and research interests. Results: A total of 1257 people consented and 1182 underwent an initial cognitive screening. Earned media (38.7%) was the most effective recruitment strategy. Participants had a mean age of 68.1 (SD 10.6), 97% were Caucasian, had 15.2 (SD 2.7) mean years of education, and 60% were female. 30% reported a family history of dementia and 70% normal cognition. Inter-rater agreement between self-reported memory status and the initial telephone cognitive assessment had a kappa of 0.31-0.43. 301 were referred to AAC sites. Conclusion: IThe Registry created an infrastructure and process to screen and refer a high volume of eager Registrants. These methods were found to be effective at prescreening individuals for studies, which facilitated AAC research recruitment. The established infrastructure and experiences gained from the Registry have served as the prototype for the web-based Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry, a national registry focusing on Alzheimer's disease prevention research.

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