Brain health actions: Evidence from the electronic Person‐Specific Outcome Measure (ePSOM) development programme

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundAs Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials move to an earlier phase in the neurodegenerative disease process, any outcome measures used to assess an intervention’s efficacy would need to be appropriate for the earlier pre‐clinical or prodromal study population. Evidence suggests that 40% of dementia cases could be prevented by targeting modifiable risk factors. Our study explores attitudes towards looking after one’s brain health and by proxy, actions individuals take to prevent dementia.MethodAs part of the electronic Person Specific Outcome Measure (ePSOM) online study focusing on what outcomes matter to individuals, we collected data on specific actions individuals take to maintain their brain health. The question on brain health offered pre‐defined answers as well as an option for free text answers. Here, we report both the results from the pre‐defined answers as well as the analysis of the large free text answers data set. We used Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques based on pretrained GloVe vectors to cluster the free text responses. The survey received ethical approval and ran August – November 2019 (UK).Result5808 people completed the ePSOM survey. Most were female (76.9%), married (63.4%) and living in an urban area (61.8%). The mean age in women was 57.35 (SD=13.8) and 62.88 (SD=13.08) in men. The most common activities undertaken to maintain brain health from the pre‐defined answers were “trying to keep brain active” (86.6%) followed by “trying to keep physically active” (70.8%). However, the NLP analysis of the 621 individual free text answers revealed 45 clusters which were not included in the pre‐defined categories. Some of the largest clusters were around mindfulness; learning new words/languages and preventing mood swings. These results will be presented in further detail by key demographic groups.ConclusionThe ePSOM study has generated evidence on what activities individuals purposefully undertake to maintain brain health. The results of our study provide evidence for public health campaigns on which modifiable risk factors are more or less commonly known to prevent dementia.