MIND-ADmini:
Multidomain lifestyle intervention with medical nutrition drink benefits persons with early Alzheimer’s disease
An international study, MIND-ADmini, has demonstrated that a multidomain lifestyle intervention, alone or combined with a medical nutrition drink, is feasible and beneficial for persons with early (prodromal) Alzheimer’s disease.
MIND-ADmini is a proof-of-concept trial with a primary objective to investigate whether the combination of a lifestyle intervention and a medical nutrition drink is feasible and beneficial for persons with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease. The study was led by Karolinska Institutet och engaged research teams in several Europeans countries.
The results from MIND-ADmini, which were recently published in Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, opens for new possibilities to treat Alzheimer’s disease at an early stage. The trial was a randomized controlled study, carried out in Sweden, Finland, Germany and France over a period of six months. The participants were 60–85 years old and had prodromal Alzheimer’s disease as well as vascular and lifestyle related risk factors at the beginning of the trial. A total of 93 participants were randomized into three groups. One group took part in a multidomain lifestyle intervention based on the FINGER model (dietary advice, physical activity, cognitive training, social stimulation and vascular metabolic risk management). Another group received the lifestyle intervention combined with daily intake of a drink containing Fortasyn Connect, a nutritional formulation developed to meet the specific needs of persons with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease. The third group, which functioned as a control group, received regular health advice and regular care.
To investigate the feasibility of the lifestyle intervention, the research teams observed and measured the participants’ adherence to the program’s different lifestyle domains, as well as their cognitive and functional capabilities.
91 percent of the participants stayed in the study throughout the entire six month period. The group which received the lifestyle intervention with the nutrition drink scored highest on adherence within all domains of the intervention and particularly within cognitive training and diet adaptations. This group showed a significant decrease of cardiovascular risk and a lower degree of cognitive and functional deterioration. These results show that the combined intervention is practicable and have positive effects for persons who are already in an early phase of Alzheimer’s disease.
MIND-ADmini builds on the results and experiences of the ground-breaking Finnish-Swedish FINGER study, which demonstrated that multidomain lifestyle interventions can prevent and delay cognitive decline in elderly persons at risk of developing dementia. MIND-ADmini also builds further on the study LipiDiDiet, which demonstrated benefits of Fortasyn Connect in patients with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease. MIND-ADmini is the first trial to explore the feasibility of offering this patient group a combination of the two methods.
Professor Miia Kivipelto leads the FINGER research as well as the MIND-ADmini program. She is professor of clinical geriatrics at Karolinska Institutet, and senior geriatrician and director of research of Theme Inflammation and Aging at Karolinska University Hospital. Professor Kivipelto says that it was a natural next step to combine these two successful approaches, the non-pharmacological intervention and the medical nutrition drink, to test the effect and adherence of this combination among persons who already experience cognitive symptoms due to Alzheimer’s disease.
”Recent estimates indicate that there are 69 million persons with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease in the worldwide, and for them there is a lack of effective preventive and therapeutic solutions”, she says. “The encouraging results of MIND-ADmini pave the way to design larger clinical trials investigating longer-term cognitive and other health benefits of combined non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches. ”
MIND-ADmini was supported by the EU Joint Program – Neurodegenerative Disorders Disorders (JPND), The Swedish Alzheimer’s Association (Alzheimerfonden), Center for Innovative Medicine (CIMED) at Karolinska Institutet, The Swedish Brain Foundation (Hjärnfonden), Region Stockholm (ALF, NSV), Stockholms Sjukhem and its jubilee program, Wallenberg Clinical Scholars, FORTE and European Research Council grant 804371, NordForsk’s grant to NJ-FINGERS, Demensfonden (Dementia Fund) and the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Danone Nutricia Research was an external partner to the MIND-AD consortium and provided the medical nutrition supplement.
Article, MIND-ADmini (open access)
Thunborg, C., Wang, R., Rosenberg, A., et al. (2024). Integrating a multimodal lifestyle intervention with medical food in prodromal Alzheimer’s disease: the MIND-ADmini randomized controlled trial. Alz Res Therapy 16, 118 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13195-024-01468-x
References
Ngandu, T., Lehtisalo, J., Solomon, A., Levalahti, E., Ahtiluoto, S., Antikainen, R., . . . Kivipelto, M. (2015). A 2 year multidomain intervention of diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring versus control to prevent cognitive decline in at-risk elderly people (FINGER): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet, 385(9984), 2255-2263.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60461-5
Soininen H, Solomon A, Visser PJ, Hendrix SB, Blennow K, Kivipelto M, Hartmann T, LipiDiDiet clinical study group (2020). Alzheimers Dement. 2021 Jan;17(1):29-40. doi: 10.1002/alz.12172. Epub 2020 Sep 13.PMID: 32920957.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32920957/
