The conceptualization of PF&S as proposed in SPRINTT will promote significant advancements over the traditional approaches by enabling the precise operationalization of the condition, a clear identification of the affected population and the rapid translation of findings to the clinical arena.
The intervention proposed in the SPRINT-T trial is original (although founded on solid background and data, a multicomponent intervention against the outcome of mobility disability has never been tested on a large scale), relevant (it targets conditions of high prevalence in European community-dwelling elders), pertinent (it is focused on function, that is a primary component of quality of life and the most important outcome in the elderly), easily applicable at a population level (thus facilitating the future clinical implementation of its findings), and scalable (it will validate health technology services and ICT infrastructures for optimal data acquisition/analysis, clinical decision-making, and accessibility to the interventions from the participant’s home).
The randomized controlled trial to be conducted within the SPRINTT project activities will represent the largest study conducted in Europe for determining whether disability might be prevented by targeting specific risk factors (i.e., the PF&S condition). At the same time, the trial will indirectly provide the opportunity to identify older persons with PF&S which may not be responsive to healthy lifestyle modifications, thus identifying individuals who may require additional treatment to prevent/reverse the disabling process. Generated data will allow secondary clinical research and provide a solid basis for scientific and regulatory consensus beyond Europe, by the mean of metanalyses with parallel research programs implemented in other world regions.
The SPRINTT consortium is composed by partners from more than 20 private and public institutions distributed over 11 European countries.