Closing the Gap Between Observational Research and Randomized Trials for Prevention of Alzheimer‘s Disease and Dementia

Observational studies should have a core role in justifying and guiding the development of randomized controlled trials, but to date observational research and trials on Alzheimer’s disease prevention are not closely aligned. Observational and randomized studies nearly always answer different questions, even when nominally addressing similar topics. Integration across heterogeneous observational data sources will be necessary to provide the sample size, diversity, and variety of measurements to provide such specificity, but currently, we do not have systematic tools to combine evidence from heterogeneous data sources to guide trial design. This proposal builds on Robins g-formula­­–based methods for counterfactual simulations and takes advantage of recent critical advances in causal methods for data integration, based on Pearls d-separation criteria for transportability.

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