Trial design and study setting
The present study was designed as a multi-center, national, double-blind, community-based cluster RCT (2020–2024). We followed the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials guidelines (SPIRIT) in developing this protocol.
This program was led by the West China Hospital of Sichuan University (WCHSCU). We advertised for research partners on the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatrics (NCRCG) platform, and 27 hospitals responded. After one-on-one communication, we decided that the project would be carried out simultaneously with 12 sub-center research partners in 10 major Chinese cities. The present study will be conducted in Chengdu City (WCHSCU, Chengdu Fifth People's Hospital, and The First Veterans hospital of Sichuan Province), Daqing City (Daqing Long Nan Hospital), Nanning City (The First People's Hospital of Nanning), Hangzhou City (The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine), Lanzhou City (The First Hospital of Lanzhou University), Nanjing City (Jiangsu Province Geriatric Hospital), Yibin City (The Second People's Hospital of Yibin), Changchun City (Jilin Provincial People's Hospital), Qingdao City (Qingdao Municipal Hospital), Tai'an City (Taian City Central Hospital). The signing of study cooperation agreements between WCHSCU and each sub-center and ethical application in each sub-center is in progress. As of August 2022, eight of the 12 sub-centers had completed ethical applications and signed research cooperation agreements, while the remaining four partners are still in the process.
In each sub-center city, three communities are selected: the blank control group, the health education group, and the multidimensional intervention group. According to the eligibility criteria, 30 participants from each community were selected to participate in the study. All participants from the same community will receive the same intervention, and the offline intervention will be carried out for the next six months based on the research design content of each group.
Participants eligibility criteria and timeline
All participants in the present study are from natural population communities, all intervention staff must pass the uniform training and examination organized by the NCRCG before carrying out the specific intervention work.
In order to find MCI subjects in the community more accurately and quickly, our team set the following subject qualification criteria in accordance with "2018 Chinese Guidelines for Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia and Cognitive Impairment (V): Diagnosis and Treatment of Mild Cognitive Impairment"(19). The following screening eligibility criteria are used:
Inclusion criteria:
1. The participants were community residents aged 50 and above (age is subject to ID card).
2. The chief complaint of forgetfulness (self-reported memory deterioration in the last five years) or memory deterioration confirmed by myself or his or her escorts during the interview.
3. The baseline Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score was less than 26/30, Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) score was more than 22.
4. On the daily instrumental activity scale, Lawton and Brody scored more than 6/8.
5. Being able to live in their own homes rather than hospitals or long-term care facilities.
6. Can read and write by themselves.
7. Do not take anti-dementia medications (e.g., donepezil, galantamine) recently or during the study period.
8. Sign the informed consent form, confirming that you have been informed of all relevant contents of the trial.
9. Able to walk four meters independently with or without a walker.
10. Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) scale confirmed that the participants were healthy enough to participate in the relevant exercise.
11. Complete all assessment contents and sign the informed consent form.
Exclusion criteria:
1. In the past three months, engaged in moderate-intensity physical exercise for physical training for more than 60 min per week;
2. Diagnosed with any type of dementia.
3. Impaired cognitive function caused by neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, frontotemporal dementia) but not AD and vascular cognitive impairment.
4. Have a high risk of adverse cardiovascular events during exercise, or fail to adjust their activities according to the guidance of rehabilitation exercise experts, or achieve the recommended activity level through understanding.
5. Diagnosis of severe peripheral neuropathy or severe musculoskeletal or joint diseases that impair mobility.
6. Using medications that may impair cognitive function, such as anticholinergics, including drugs with significant anticholinergic properties (e.g., amitriptyline), major sedatives (i.e., typical and atypical antipsychotics), and anticonvulsants (e.g., gabapentin, and valproate).
7. Any hormone therapy (estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone) received within the previous 24 months.
8. Plan to or have participated in concurrent clinical drug or exercise trials.
9. The older adult with metal in the body, such as dentures (not to be removed), cardiac pacemakers, artificial hip joints, steel plates, steel nails, stents, and other metals, so that the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) test results are not affected.
Participant timeline
Details of the study timeline and flow of participant are shown in Figs. 1 and 2.
Figure 2. Flow of participant
Meanwhile, the overall arrangement of trial timeline is as follows:
Meanwhile, the overall arrangement of trial timeline is as follows:
2020.1-2021.1: Research design and setting.
2021.1-2021.7: Community screening and preparation (pilot study).
2021.9-2022.7: Complete the initial screening of older adults in the communities, and enroll, intervene, and exit the group (pilot study).
2022.3-2022.12: Complete the screening of national multi-center research partners. Each partner applies for ethics and completes the screening of local communities.
2022.8-2022.12: Summarize and review the complete pilot-study process, identify problems and countermeasures, and optimize the research program.
2022.12-2025.12: The national multi-center study will be conducted simultaneously.
Sample size and groups
In the present study, the sample size is determined primarily by the following factors: (1) It is difficult to maintain the compliance of the community population, which necessitates a significant investment of workforce by the research team to maintain compliance; (2) The quality control difficulty of multidomain intervention is high, and more human and material resources required in supervising the quality of each link of the research; (3) Screening of potential subjects in the community requires high time and cost; (4) Due to the reasons of research content and funding, the number of our team members is limited; (5) MCI prevalence was set as P = 0.34(20), power = 0.95, and dropout rate = 0.2. Therefore, considering scientific and practical feasibility and other factors, according to the sample size calculation method of cluster RCT study(21), the total sample size of the single center would be 90, with 30 participants in each community. Therefore, this study intends to include 12 sub-centers to participate, with a total sample size of 1080.
Recruitment and screening
Considering the difficulty and high dropout rate of community-based intervention research, the present study aimed to evaluate participant compliance through repeated invitation and cognitive assessment during the subject recruitment process to provide sufficient compliance intensity for the smooth implementation of the offline intervention. The following are the main steps in the participant screening process:
1. The research team disseminates the program in the community and compiles a list of potential participants by encouraging community residents to sign up.
2. Potential participants who meet the eligibility criteria will participate in a preliminary screening for the risk of cognitive impairment (with a sample size of more than 100 people in each community). The assessment content will mainly focus on a special assessment of cognitive domains. This assessment time will be approximately 30–40 min for each person. Participants who complete this step are considered to have passed the first compliance test.
3. A team of doctors is organized to provide community on-site answers to the preliminary screening results in the community. The potential participants are invited to participate in the cognitively related risk factors (such as the ability to live daily, anxiety, and depression). Subjects who successfully completed this step have passed the second compliance assessment.
4. The community research manager will call the potential participants (after two rounds of compliance assessment), invite them to take part in biological sample testing and fMRI under the condition of obtaining their consent and signing the ethical, informed consent, and finally determine the list of participants.
The recruitment standardization of each participant must go through three rounds of quality control work before de or she formally enters the study:
1 The data platform manager screened out the list of eligible participants based on the assessment results recorded in the database and submitted it to the PI for the second round of review;
2 The principal investigator (PI) reviewed the eligibility conditions of the participants in the list again based on eligibility criteria and submitted the list to the community manager for the third round of confirmation;
3 Community managers conducted community on-site interviews with the community participants, informed them about the content of the informed consent again, and signed the informed consent will be by the participants themselves.
Interventions
Our study will be mainly composed of Multidimensional intervention group, Health education intervention group and Blank control group. Each study group receives varying levels of cognitive health risk factor intervention, as presented in Table 1.
Table 1
Interventions and groups setting.
Section
|
Blank control
|
Health Education Intervention
|
Multidimensional Intervention
|
Exercise intervention
|
×
|
×
|
√
|
Sleep intervention
|
×
|
×
|
√
|
Meditation intervention
|
×
|
×
|
√
|
Dietary intervention
|
×
|
×
|
√
|
Health education intervention
|
×
|
√
|
√
|
Multidomain intervention group
According to the study design, the intervention methods in the present study primarily included exercise training, sleep guidance, meditation training, dietary guidance, and health education.
In the exercise intervention part, the project team invited geriatrics and physical training experts to develop a six-month advanced exercise training program tailored to the physical characteristics of older adults in China. Resistance training, aerobic exercise, flexibility training, and traditional Chinese exercise were the main components of the exercise program (modified Taijiquan and Baduanjin). Two fixed physical training experts guided all subjects in the multidimensional intervention group through the entire exercise intervention process. The intervention method is offline group intervention with an intervention frequency of three times per week, and each intervention lasts approximately one hour. The following is the main process of exercise intervention: (1) pre-exercise mobilization, the coach introduces the course content, understands the status of the subjects, and encourages the subjects to exercise; (2) warm-up exercise, primarily static stretch; (3) formal training courses shall be conducted following the established training plan; (4) relaxation exercise, primarily static stretch; (5) post-exercise stimulation, the coach summarized the training situation, subjects provided feedback on training feelings and questions, and the coach gave positive stimulation and introduced the general situation of the next lecture.
The sleep intervention section mainly relies on community on-site sleep guidance to carry out the intervention. The target participants receive sleep assessment, Q&A, healthy sleep behavior guidance, and feedback. This is the responsibility of the sleep expert, and offline, sleep guidance will be conducted every 1.5 months.
Meditation intervention, with the same frequency as exercise intervention (three times per week). Meditation experts train participants for 15–20 min after each exercise intervention. The meditation expert guided the group members to give feedback and answer questions about the effect of meditation at the end of each complete intervention and pushed the participants to communicate their feelings about meditation.
In the dietary intervention section, nutrition experts were invited to develop hierarchical factors with "energy level" as the dietary recommendation principle based on the energy intake and expenditure characteristics of older adults in China. In each "energy level", a different diet is assigned, with the goal of "promoting cognitive health" as the overarching goal. The nutrition experts matched specific recipes for the subjects and interpreted them one-to-one based on the participants' diet scale and diet-related behavior assessment results. Every 1.5 months, nutritional dietary counseling will be provided. Simultaneously, after each offline exercise and meditation intervention, the participants are urged and reminded to eat according to their diet and given positive incentives.
Health education intervention group
Community on-site group teaching was used for the health education part of the present study, which covered 24 learning topics such as scientific exercise, joint pain, healthy sleep, nutritious diet, hypertension, diabetes, cognitive disorders, diseases, and new therapies for older adults. The project team will prepare the paper publicity materials based on the theme of each lecture and distribute the health education materials before each lecture. More than ten doctors were organized to conduct a six-month offline health education intervention course for the target participants in the pilot trial of our study.
Blank control group
Subjects in this group only performed compliance related maintenance work, such as birthday greeting messages and holiday gifts (such as a bouquet of flowers), in addition to enrollment and exit assessment.
In addition, our team developed 100 core messages centered on the theme of "cognitive health" (each message being no more than 30 words). The community manager will be responsible for establishing the online WeChat group of the community participants and sending the core message (one sentence + a landscape picture) to each group daily.
During the implementation of this study, when the subjects feel that the experimental intervention has a high risk to themselves or increases the burden of disease, our team will fully communicate with the participants and give professional advice. If the subjects still insist on withdrawing after full consideration, the research team will respect the requirements of the subjects and make relevant records.
Assignment of interventions
Sequence generation
The randomization of the code is shared by the data platform manager and PI. The PI will collect the participants' cell phone number list and community list, and the data platform manager will use the random number table method to match each cell phone number with a random code. Concurrently, the community members will be randomly divided into three groups using the random number table method. The PI then distributes the community and participant codes to the community managers, who use them to carry out the sequence generation
Randomization, allocation, concealment and blinding
The present study used a double-blinding strategy in each sub-center, and various roles involved in the study implementation included the PI, data platform manager, participant, community manager (research team), community partners, multidimensional intervention execution team, health education execution team, cognitive assessment team, and radiology testing team. Among these, only the PI and the data platform manager remain unblinded, and all other roles will keep blinded. The random number table method (performed by PI) will be used to determine the content of the intervention for each community, and the PI is responsible for conducting the specific research work within each subcenter.
The PI organizes and contacts all research processes independently, and the data platform manager is not involved in the community effort. All participants in the same community receive the same intervention, and all subjects remain blind. The PI assigns all the research work for their respective communities to three permanent community managers who do not know each other and do not collaborate with the investigator. Community partners are only responsible for research projects in their communities. There is no overlap between the multidimensional intervention and health education teams because they are only responsible for the research in their communities. The cognitive assessment team is primarily composed of temporarily recruited medical students. The team receives homogeneity training from the PI and data platform manager on the use of standards of the cognitive assessment tools and how to use the online platform. The fMRI test technician of the radiology team only knows the participants` code number and does not participate in any community intervention work except the fMRI test. The test data file is labeled as "ID + test time", and PI will retain all data. All cognition-related assessments are collected paperlessly, and community on-site assessment data are directly transmitted to the online research platform (link address: https://ncrcg-brainhealth-1301126429.file.myqcloud.com) to ensure fast and direct data transmission, reducing intermediate transmission processes, and ultimately reduce the risk of contamination.
Outcomes
Using the gold standard scale and imaging indicators as the primary outcomes, the effect of intervention can be evaluated scientifically. At the same time, exercise ability, sleep, nutrition, anxiety, depression and biological indicators are also closely related to cognitive dysfunction, and will be considered as secondary outcomes of this study.
Primary outcomes
1. Cognitive function: The assessment methods included the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) Scale, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) Scale, the Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD-Q9) Scale, the Auditory verb learn test-Huashan version (AVLT-H) Scale, the Shape Trails Test (STT-A/B) Scale, the Animal Fluency Test (AFT) Scale, the Boston Naming Test (BNT) Scale, and the Self-Consciousness Scale (SCS).
2. Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI): T1, T2, T2flair, Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI), Blood Oxygen on Level Depending (BOLD), and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI).
Secondary outcomes
1. Physical function: It primarily includes sarcopenia (muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical function), the Fried Scale, and International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF).
2. Sleep: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI).
3. Nutritional status: the multi-nutritional assessment short form (MNA-SF) and body mass index (BMI).
4. Mood disorders: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Scale, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) Scale.
5. The plasticity of multidimensional intervention on cognitive impairment biomarkers: The influence of the multidimensional intervention on cognitive impairment biomarkers was studied by micro-protein post-translational modification, metalomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and other technologies and compared with AD molecular markers to determine their relationship with disease severity and outcome. To explore the effects of the multidimensional intervention on brain perfusion, iron content, β-amyloid protein, Tau protein and phosphorylated Tau protein, deacetylase 1, IL-6, IGF-1, nitric oxide, platelet, ubiquitin, C-reactive protein, hemocysteine, and other key indicators, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), structural MRI imaging, fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence, amyloid and tau PET were used.
Data collection and analysis
Data collection methods
Cognitive-related professional assessments (Table 2) will be performed on all formally enrolled participants during enrollment and exit, including basic personal information collection, comprehensive assessment of cognitive health, physical condition assessment, fMRI testing, biological samples testing/ storing, and wearable device monitoring (sports watches).
Table 2
Contents list of participants' enrollment and exit evaluation.
Data Type
|
Dimension
|
Details/tools
|
Basic personal information collection
|
General units
|
Name, gender, age, ID number, place of birth, length of local residence, local residential address, telephone number (her/himself + relatives), educational background, nationality, language (minority language), and main occupation before 60 years old.
|
Comprehensive assessment of cognitive health
|
Cognitive function
|
MoCA Scale, MMSE Scale, DSST Scale, AVLT-H Scale, STT Scale, AFT Scale, and BNT-30 Scale
|
|
Daily living ability
|
ADL Scale, and IADL Scale.
|
|
Mental
|
PHQ-9 Scale, and GAD-7 Scale.
|
|
Sleep
|
PSQI Scale.
|
|
Nutrition
|
MNA-SF Scale.
|
|
Physical exercise
|
IPAQ-SF Scale.
|
|
Sarcopenia
|
SARC-F Scale.
|
|
Frail
|
FRAIL Scale.
|
|
Social function information
|
SSRS Scale.
|
|
Others
|
Previous disease history, hospitalization history \ Medication status \ diet, drinking, and smoking.
|
Physical condition assessment
|
General units
|
Body mass index, blood pressure, waist-hip ratio, biceps circumference, triceps skinfold thickness, arm span, and calf circumference.
|
|
Sarcopenia
|
Handgrip strength, six-meter walk, BIA, five-time chair stand test, and appendicular skeletal muscle mass.
|
Functional magnetic resonance imaging testing
|
Cognitive related units
|
T1, T2, T2flair, DWI, BOLD, DTI.
|
Biological samples testing/ storing
|
Biological sample testing information
|
Blood routine, biochemistry, trace elements, inflammatory factors, hormones, stool, and urine routine.
|
|
Cryopreserved samples (-80 ˚C)
|
Blood and stool.
|
Wearable device monitoring (sports watches)
|
Sleep data
|
Total sleep duration, deep sleep duration, and light sleep duration.
|
|
Movement data
|
Heart rate.
|
Note: MoCA, Montreal Cognitive Assessment; MMSE, Mini-mental State Examination; DSST, Digit Symbol Substitution Test; AVLT-H, Auditory verb learn test-Huashan; STT, Shape Trails Test; AFT, Animal Fluency Test; BNT, Boston Naming Test; ADL, Activities of Daily Living; IADL, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living; PHQ-9, Patient Health Questionnaire-9; GAD-7, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7; PSQI, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; MNA-SF, Multi-Nutritional Assessment Short Form; IPAQ-SF, International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form; SARC-F, Sarcopenia-Five; SSRS, Social Support Rating Scale; DWI, Diffusion Weighted Imaging; BOLD, Blood Oxygen on Level Depending; DTI, Diffusion Tensor Imaging. |
Statistical methods
To compare the results of cognitive assessment among groups, quantitative data analysis will use R IBM SPSS software, relying on the analysis of variance, covariance, and other methods. Mean, standard deviation (SD), median, and range will describe continuous variables. Counting, proportion, the Wilcoxon test, and other methods will be used to analyze categorical variables. Graphical summaries such as boxplots, case profiles, and labeled dispersion maps will be used to compare the distribution of intervention variables in each group and participant characteristics between groups. A linear mixed model will be used to simulate longitudinal changes in primary responses between groups, allowing for missing data (assuming data is missing at random) and within-subject correlations for repeated measures over time, with the model adjusting for baseline response variables and other covariates as needed. The effectiveness analysis (Full Analysis Set, Per Protocol Set) will be performed to assess the overall effect of the intervention.
Using data analysis techniques such as regression, chi-square, T-test, rank-sum test, normality test, decision tree, and artificial intelligence deep learning, this study will rely on multi-modal data, take training effect and cognitive improvement as label values, and build a prediction and intervention model of mild cognitive dysfunction supported by artificial intelligence technology. Simultaneously, our team will apply explicable machine learning theory to explain the variables in the model and try to create new ideas for the basic research direction.