RCT Targeting Cognition in Early Alzheimer's Disease by Improving Sleep With Trazodone (REST)
Johns Hopkins University
Summary
To investigate the effect of trazodone on sleep, hippocampal-dependent memory and hippocampal excitability. The investigators hypothesize that trazodone will improve total sleep time and proportion of time in Slow Wave Sleep (SWS).
Description
The REST trial is a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover study of trazodone (50 mg at bedtime) in participants with Amnestic Mild Cognitive impairment (aMCI) and sleep complaints. The investigators will randomize 100 subjects and administer trazodone and placebo for 4 weeks each with a 4-week washout period in between. A 4-week washout period is more than sufficient due to trazodone's elimination half-life of 10-12 hours. The crossover design will facilitate recruitment and enable the use of the subjects as a control without requiring a parallel placebo arm.
Eligibility
- Age range
- 55+ years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria: 1. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) as defined by Albert et al.2 including subjective memory complaint and/or objective evidence of memory problems; 2. Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) of 0.5 with a Memory Box score of \>=0.5; 3. Evidence of sleep complaints with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of \>5 (a well-validated cutoff observed in \>40% of older persons); 4. Memory performance \> 1.5 Standard Deviation (SD) below age-and education-matched control subjects on the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) List Recall; 5. Visual and a…
Interventions
- DrugTrazodone
50mg of trazodone administered for 4 weeks.
- DrugPlacebo
Placebo administered for 4 weeks.
Location
- Johns Hopkins HospitalBaltimore, Maryland