Perspective: Minimal clinically important difference (MCID) and Alzheimer's disease clinical trials

The minimum clinically important difference (MCID) is a measure of the minimal clinically relevant change. The MCID represents the smallest difference in score on the measure or domain of interest which patients or clinicians perceive as beneficial or as meaningful decline. The MCID is not an alternative clinical trial outcome; it does not apply to group measures and is used as a means of determining whether an individual patient has reached a threshold of change. MCIDs have been derived for symptomatic treatments and for disease targeted therapies. MCIDs have been derived for nearly all clinical trial instruments used in AD therapeutic research. Application of the MCID to patients on disease-targeted therapies requires awareness of the expected increasing treatment-no treatment difference exhibited by these agents. The MCID complements other strategies for assessing the meaningfulness of interventions including effect size, number needed to treat, responder analyses, time saved, quality of life, and quality-adjusted life years. MCID is not a required measure for regulatory approval of a therapeutic since it is applicable to individual patients and not to group outcomes or mean differences used to determine treatment benefit in clinical trials.

MCID is a key measure of within-person change in cognition, function, or behavior when it is applied to metrics of Alzheimer's disease progression.In Alzheimer's disease, MCID or minimum within person change (MWPC) can function as useful means of determining if a patient has progressed to thresholds of detectable change.In Alzheimer's disease, MCID/MWPC can be used to determine the number or percent of individuals who have progressed to detectable levels of within-person change, with differences anticipated in active treatment and placebo groups.MCID/MWPC are not measures that are appropriately applied to group outcomes of clinical trials.