O1-05-06

intensive, long-term caregiver education and support program delays patient nursing home admission. Methods: The AENEAS study is a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial. A total of 292 community-dwelling patients at a mean age of 76 years with moderate (CDR 2, MMSE 18 to 8) probable or possible Alzheimer’s Disease (NINCDS-ADRDA) and their primary caregivers were enrolled in 15 centers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Caregivers in the intervention group participated in a multicomponent, highly standardized, education and support program which had been developed by the German Alzheimer’s Association. It was composed of 7 bi-weekly group sessions (6 to 8 participants, 120 minutes duration) followed by 6 bi-monthly refresher meetings. Caregivers in the control group received one session of standard social worker counseling. Caregivers were re-interviewed 12 months after the initial 7 group meetings to ascertain patient nursing home admission. Raters were blinded to participants’ group allocation. Results: For a preliminary analysis follow-up data were available on 259 participants from 13 centers. In each group, 22 patients had been permanently admitted to a nursing home (p 0.74). The mean time to nursing home admission was approximately 2 months longer in the intervention than in the control group, but this difference did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions: The multi-component, longterm caregiver intervention was associated with a non-significant delay in patient nursing home admissions. These findings will be discussed in terms of caregiver intervention design and targeting. This work was supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (Grant 01GL0305).