Validation and demonstration of a new comprehensive model of Alzheimer's disease progression.

Introduction: Identifying the course of Alzheimer's disease (AD) for individual patients is important for numerous clinical applications. Ideally, prognostic models should provide information about a range of clinical features across the entire disease process. Previously, we published a new comprehensive longitudinal model of AD progression with inputs/outputs covering 11 interconnected clinical measurement domains.

Methods: Here, we (1) validate the model on an independent cohort; and (2) demonstrate the model's utility in clinical applications by projecting changes in 6 of the 11 domains.

Results: Survival and prevalence curves for two representative outcomes-mortality and dependency-generated by the model accurately reproduced the observed curves both overall and for patients subdivided according to risk levels using an independent Cox model.

Discussion: The new model, validated here, effectively reproduces the observed course of AD from an initial visit assessment, allowing users to project coordinated developments for individual patients of multiple disease features.