Background: Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia worldwide. Despite the publication of numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses that have summarized the evidence associated with pharmacotherapies (PTs) and nonpharmacotherapies (NPTs) for the wide range of interventions available for AD treatment, their comparative safety and efficacy remains insufficiently defined.Methods: Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be selected according to the following criteria: conducted in elderly patients aged 60 years or older with AD living in community or institutionalized settings, applied pairwise meta-analysis (PMA) or network meta-analysis (NMA) approaches providing pooled relative treatment effects for at least 1 pair of PTs or NPTs, and providing at least 1 of the following outcomes for patients/caregivers: cognitive, functional status, behavior, quality of life (QoL), and caregiver stress or burden. All article screening, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment will be completed independently by 2 reviewers. Relative treatment rankings will be reported with mean ranks and surface under the cumulative ranking curves.
Results and Conclusion:We will determine the most efficacious treatment strategies for AD patients from the most highly ranked treatments. These results will help to guide clinical decision-making and improve patient care.
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