AD and its comorbidities: An obstacle to develop a clinically efficient treatment?

Whilst the development of new drugs designed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been widely publicised, we do not yet have treatments that are proven to slow the progression of AD. The decision taken by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to grant a licence for the use of aducanumab, based on the premise that β-amyloid removal would result in downstream benefits rather than demonstration of cognitive efficacy per se contrasts with that made by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), who declined to grant a licence, citing lack of evidence of clinical improvement, and a failure to demonstrate that the treatment was sufficiently safe. Multiple factors have complicated the search for new and effective treatments for the management of AD. It is a complex neurodegenerative condition in which multiple comorbidities are common in the affected population. However, such conditions are commonly exclusion criteria in clinical trials for new treatments. Here we discuss how some of these comorbidities impact the development of clinically efficient treatments for AD. Firstly, we will examine what is meant by AD, and how definitions of this condition have changed and continue to evolve. Secondly, we describe some of the most important comorbid conditions accompanying and in some cases mimicking AD. Finally, we will examine how the inclusion, or exclusion, of these conditions from AD research may have had an effect on treatment trials, the implications of co-morbidities on “real-life” use of novel therapeutics especially when these have been trialled in patients with relatively pure disease, and how clinical trials may need to adapt to account for comorbidities in the future.