ADRC: Clinical Treatment & Longitudinal Assessment Research Program
Director: Barry Reisberg, M.D.

The Clinical Treatment and Longitudinal Assessment Program has been studying and treating the symptoms of aging and Alzheimer’s disease for nearly a quarter century. A large number of investigators are involved in these studies and treatment efforts which have been conducted under the direction of Barry Reisberg MD, a geriatric psychiatrist who is Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine.

Initial studies examined the clinical nature of aging and Alzheimer's disease. In the early 80's Alzheimer’s disease was believed to be unrecognnizable and it was believed that physicians could not diagnose this condition during a patient's lifetime. Dr. Reisberg and associates published the Global Deterioration Scale in 1982, which described the course of brain aging and Alzheimer's disease in unprecedented detail. Originally published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, this description was enormously useful and in the next few years was excerpted in diverse journals ranging from the Journal of the American Medical Association to Reader's Digest. The Global Deterioration Scale has continued to be widely used around the world to the present day.

Further studies described the progression of aging and Alzheimer's disease in many other ways. One of the important descriptions was of the nature of treatable behavioral symptoms which occur in the course of Alzheimer's disease. These descriptions, originally published in the 1980's, were used in the first approvals of drug treatments for behavioral disturbances in Alzheimer's disease around the world in the last few years. Other studies have described the symptoms of severe AD in great detail. These studies have recently resulted in a national trial conducted under our direction, which has identified the first drug treatment for severe AD. This drug treatment was recently approved by the European regulatory authorities. These studies have also been identifying the nature and meaning of the common memory complaints associated with normal aging. The currently universally used definition of the condition, Mild Cognitive Impairment, resulted from these studies. Another important finding has been the time course of the various stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Many clinicians and scientists have been participating in these studies. The findings from the work of these investigators are too numerous to describe in this brief summary. However, some notable examples include the description of early motor and balance deficits accompanying cognitive decline in normal aging and mild cognitive impairment by Drs Kluger and Franssen. Dr. Franssen went on to describe the rigidity which occurs as Alzheimer's disease progresses. Another investigator, Liduin Souren, RN, MSN, was the first to note the terrible deformities which commonly occur in the final stage of AD. The result of this work was our conviction that we could alleviate many of these symptoms in AD by interventions such as exercise programs. Recent findings indicate that we can in fact prevent some of the balance and motor losses.

One very interesting aspect of these studies is our finding that many symptoms in AD reverse the order of acquisition in normal human development. We have suggested a terminology for this phenomenon, "retrogenesis". We have found that the stages of AD can be better understood by recognizing the corresponding developmental age. This has recently led us to develop a new science of AD management which has attracted worldwide interest. Importantly, this phenomenon also points to radically new and promising drug treatments for AD which we will be testing in the coming years.

In summary, this scientific and medical research has resulted in a continuous flow of important and exciting findings which have significantly benefited AD patients and their families and caregivers throughout the world.

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