Nutritional Interventions for the Prevention of Cognitive Function in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Network Meta-Analysis of Randomized Control Trials (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the status between cognitive decline by physiological ageing and the severity of the decline, particularly neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD is one of the most popular neurodegenerative disorders characterised by cognition impairment. People with MCI are at a higher risk of developing AD. Even though MCI and AD are incurable, nutritional interventions might be one of the possible solutions to delay or prevent them. As a result, effective interventions used to decelerate or alleviate the progress of cognitive impairment in elders have become a great issue in geriatric care. Given the synergistic effects of nutrition on health, assessing whether nutritional supplements or dietary composition effectively prevent MCI/AD cognitive impairment is essential for developing an interventional strategy. OBJECTIVE The aim is to estimate the effectiveness of various nutritional interventions on cognitive function in patients with MCI or AD by performing a network meta-analysis and systematic review and pairwise meta-analysis of clinical trials or randomised controlled trials. METHODS This review will follow the Population, Exposure, Comparison, Outcome (PI(E)CO) model and adheres to the PRISMA-P guidelines. Two investigators will conduct an electronic database search using the PubMed database independently. Data extraction from the studies will be chosen by applying the inclusion criteria, and those data will assess their risk of bias by the revised tool. We will also assess the evidence quality using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework. The outcomes of interest are assessing the cognitive function in patients with MCI or AD; the acceptability of nutritional interventions will also be included in the secondary outcome. Pairwise and network meta-analyses (random-effects model) will be used to assess the pooled effect of each intervention. RESULTS Not applicable. CONCLUSIONS The goal of this study is to determine whether nutritional interventions are useful for the prevention of cognitive decline and which intervention is the most effective for delaying cognitive decline in patients with MCI and AD CLINICALTRIAL PROSPERO registration number CRD42022331173.