This page is alzhub.org's plain-English summary of a published study, not the paper itself. It is generated from the record we hold for this study, sourced and linked below — check the original for the full text and methods.

51/100

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 51 out of 100. Treatments

Topic: Amyloid, tau and blood-test diagnosis

Plain-language summary

This 12-week, multinational study compared the tolerability and cognitive effects of donepezil (up to 10 mg once daily) and rivastigmine (up to 6 mg twice daily) in 111 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Both medications were administered open label according to recommended dosing regimens from the respective product labelling available during the conduct of the study. More patients in the donepezil group (89.3%) completed the study compared with the rivastigmine group (69.1%; p=0.009), and 10.7% of the donepezil group and 21.8% of the rivastigmine group discontinued due to adverse events (AEs); 87.5% of donepezil-treated patients and 47.3% of rivastigmine-treated patients remained on the maximum approved dose of each drug at the last study visit. Both groups showed comparable improvements on the ADAS-cog administered by raters blind to study medication at weeks 4 and 12. Thus, using the recommended dosing schedules, donepezil was better tolerated with fewer discontinuations due to AEs, and both agents improved cognition to a similar extent.

Cite this study APA, Vancouver, BibTeX · download .bib or .ris

APA 7th

Wilkinson, D. G., Passmore, A. P., Bullock, R., Hopker, S. W., Smith, R., Potocnik, F. C., et al. (2002). A multinational, randomised, 12-week, comparative study of donepezil and rivastigmine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. International journal of clinical practice. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2002.tb11294.x

Vancouver

Wilkinson DG, Passmore AP, Bullock R, Hopker SW, Smith R, Potocnik FC, et al. A multinational, randomised, 12-week, comparative study of donepezil and rivastigmine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. International journal of clinical practice. 2002. doi:10.1111/j.1742-1241.2002.tb11294.x. PMID: 12166542.

BibTeX

@article{wilkinson2002-12166542,
  author  = {Wilkinson, D. G. and Passmore, A. P. and Bullock, R. and Hopker, S. W. and Smith, R. and Potocnik, F. C. and Maud, C. M. and Engelbrecht, I. and others},
  title   = {{A multinational, randomised, 12-week, comparative study of donepezil and rivastigmine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease}},
  journal = {International journal of clinical practice},
  year    = {2002},
  doi     = {10.1111/j.1742-1241.2002.tb11294.x},
  pmid    = {12166542},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2002.tb11294.x}
}

Built from the record alzhub holds for this paper, not looked up. Volume, issue and page numbers are not held in the record. The record's author list ends in “et al.”, so not every author is named. Check the citation against the original before you use it.

How to read this study

Design: this is a trial. Participants are assigned to a treatment or a comparison, so the key questions are who was enrolled, whether the comparison group got a placebo or nothing, how long people were followed, and whether the result is on a measure that matters to patients or on a biomarker. Open-label and small trials can overstate benefit.
Size: the record lists 111 participants. Ask whether that is enough for the question, and who they were.
Effect: the record reports “89.3%; 69.1%; 10.7%”. A statistically significant result can still be small in daily life.

What the evidence grade means here

This page is graded low. alzhub.org assigns the grade automatically from keywords in the abstract, not from reading the paper. Low means the abstract matched neither pattern. It is the default label, and it does not mean the work is poor; many sound lab and imaging papers land here. It can add at most 5 of the 100 points in the study score, and it is a label about design, not a verdict on whether the findings are true.

New to reading papers? Six questions to ask of any Alzheimer’s study · how we score.

Key findings

More patients in the donepezil group (89.3%) completed the study compared with the rivastigmine group (69.1%; p=0.009), and 10.7% of the donepezil group and 21.8% of the rivastigmine group discontinued due to adverse events (AEs); 87.5% of donepezil-treated patients and 47.3% of rivastigmine-treated patients remained on the maximum approved dose of each drug at the last study visit.

New to this subject? Start with our plain-English guide: Treatments →

Study details

Participants111
Effect size89.3%; 69.1%; 10.7%
Evidence strengthLow

How this study scored 51/100

Published in a peer-reviewed journal. Scored zero for study design because the record does not state it. We have no data on journal's citation record, times cited, citations per year, impact for its field and year, cited by studies here, still being cited, senior author's track record and institution's track record, so those were left out: it earned 31 of the 61 points we could judge it on, which is 51 out of 100.

Component	Points	Why
Journal tier	7 / 10	Tier 3 — peer-reviewed journal (International journal of clinical practice)
Journal's citation record	— / 4	No journal record from OpenAlex — left out of this score
Study design	0 / 12	No study design recorded — scores zero, not guessed (not stated in the record — scored 0)
Strength of evidence	1 / 5	Rated “low” in our summary
Peer-review validation	10 / 10	Peer-reviewed. Published as an article in a named peer-reviewed journal.
How recent	1 / 5	2002 — older than 20 years, still counted
Sample size	2 / 4	111 participants
Effect reported	2 / 3	Effect reported as a number, without an interval or test
Studied in people	3 / 3	Studied in people (participant count stated)
Randomized / blinded	1 / 2	Randomized (as stated in the record)
Times cited	— / 7	No citation count (not found in OpenAlex) — left out of this score
Citations per year	— / 5	No citation count or no year — left out of this score
Impact for its field and year	— / 6	No field-weighted citation impact (OpenAlex has none yet) — left out of this score
Cited by studies here	— / 6	Not yet checked against this library's citation graph — left out of this score
Still being cited	— / 4	No yearly citation counts — left out of this score
Senior author's track record	— / 4	Senior author's record not available — left out of this score
Institution's track record	— / 3	No institution listed in OpenAlex — left out of this score
Multicenter collaboration	2 / 3	PubMed indexes it as a multicentre study
Indexed in PubMed	2 / 2	Indexed in PubMed (PMID 12166542)
Free to read	0 / 2	Behind a paywall — scores zero
Points	31 / 61	Scored on 12 of 20 parts. We have no data for the rest, so they are left out: 31 of the 61 points we could judge it on is 51 out of 100.
Total	51 / 100	—

What each of these 20 components measures, and what this score is not →

Read the original

Free copy unknown: no free-copy check has an answer for this record yet. That does not mean it is paywalled.

Studies in the library that share something with this one. The line above each title says what.

Related studies in Treatments from nearby years

Also tagged “randomised”

2 studies in the library carry the topic tag “randomised”; these are this study's neighbours in a fixed, alphabetical-by-hash tour of them, not the closest in content. All 2 tagged studies.

Studies sharing this one's topic tags

Similar studies

More on Treatments

Where this led: Rivastigmine on the treatments page — its current status, approval date, side-effect rate and list price, kept up to date.

See all studies in Treatments →