Our review summarizes the diagnostic accuracy of plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217) in detecting amyloid and tau pathology on positron emission tomography (PET). 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
After adjusting for retinal scan signal strength, neurofilament light chain showed a stronger negative association with retinal nerve fibre layer thickness [standardized beta estimate ( β ) = -0.184] and ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer thickness ( β = -0.139) compared to phosphorylated tau181, which exhibited weaker associations with ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer ( β = -0.091) and retinal nerve fibre layer ( β = -0.059). 3 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 100
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Baseline plasma GFAP could detect abnormal CSF Aβ42/40 and CSF Aβ42/T-tau with an AUC of 0.79 (95% CI 0.72-0.86) and 0.80 (95% CI 0.72-0.86), respectively. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
68/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 68 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2020-07-16
SUVr abnormality was most frequently observed in cingulate, followed by orbitofrontal, precuneal, and insular cortices and then the associative, temporal, and occipital regions. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 867
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
68/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 68 out of 100.
·
Nature medicine
·
2026-07-01
Detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) before the development of clinical symptoms is critical for enabling the use of new treatments. 2 key findings →
Participants: 551
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
MES-defined cognitive impairment (≤-2 standard deviation [SD] deviation after adjustment for demographics) was identified in 12.4% of participants. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
67/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2021-12-14
Plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 is a robust measure for detecting amyloid plaques and can be utilized to aid in the diagnosis of AD, identify those at risk for future dementia due to AD, and improve the diversity of populations enrolled in AD research and clinical trials. 3 key findings →
Participants: 465
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
67/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100.
·
JAMA neurology
·
2017-05-01
This study confirms the role of NFL as a biomarker in ALS. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 94
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The development of blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology as tools for screening the general population is essential, but persists controversies. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
JOURNAL/nrgr/04.03/01300535-202508000-00027/figure1/v/2024-09-30T120553Z/r/image-tiff Several promising plasma biomarker proteins, such as amyloid-β (Aβ), tau, neurofilament light chain, and glial fibrillary acidic protein, are widely used for the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 99
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
66/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 66 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2025-10-28
Biomarkers were measured in 431 Black and 583 White participants (mean age of 77 and 80 years and 17% and 21% of men, respectively), generating a balanced sample of 366:366. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 1,014
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
Serum NFL is increased in ALS in comparison to other conditions and can serve as diagnostic and prognostic biomarker. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 124
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Plasma p-tau biomarkers had a greater diagnostic performance and larger effect sizes compared to t-tau and Aβ42/40 assays in detecting Aβ pathology. 5 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 197
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The diagnostic performance of plasma biomarkers was poor (area under the curve [AUC] between 0·53 [95% CI 0·44-0·62] and 0·74 [0·66-0·82]) except for plasma NfL concentrations, which had an AUC of 0·88 (0·82-0·93) for the differentiation of the asymptomatic group versus the prodromal Alzheimer's disease group and 0·95 (0·92-0·98) for the asymptomatic group versus the Alzheimer's disease dementia group. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 282
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Full text may need a subscription
Higher levels of P-tau181 (HR = 1.32 [95% CI: 1.17-1.51]), NfL (HR = 1.19 [95% CI: 1.03-1.36]), and GFAP (HR = 1.36 [95% CI: 1.22-1.52]), and a lower Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio (HR = 0.80 [95% CI: 0.68-0.95]) were associated with an increased risk of progressing to clinically-diagnosed DAT. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 1,007
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
A combination of plasma p-tau181, NfL, and GFAP, but not Aβ 1-42/1-40 , might be useful to discriminate AD, FTD, and DLB. 1 key finding →
Participants: 160
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
We detected an increased concordance in the visual and quantitative (standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) and total volume of distribution (VT)) [18F]AV45 PET measures when the CSF Aβ1-42/Aβ1-40 was applied compared to Aβ1-42 alone. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 17
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
CU and Obj‐SCD has lower baseline p‐tau181 than MCI and did not differ from one another. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 402
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Plasma p-tau217 measured using the Lumipulse platform shows promise as an accurate biomarker of preclinical AD pathology. 4 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
64/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 64 out of 100.
·
Aging
·
2023-09-22
The present study suggested that serum SIRT1 might be an early promising diagnostic biomarker for Alzheimer's Disease. 3 key findings →
Design: case-control study
Participants: 26
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Studies evaluating the diagnostic test accuracy of plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau) and amyloid beta (Aβ) tests (p-tau217, %p-tau217, p-tau181, p-tau231, and Aβ42/Aβ40) compared to reference standard tests (cerebrospinal fluid [CSF] AD biomarkers, amyloid positron emission tomography [PET], or neuropathology) in individuals with cognitive impairment (mild cognitive impairment or dementia) in specialized care settings were included. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
63/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 63 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2025-06-05
Plasma p-tau217 levels showed a significant increase across advancing AD stages, with all between-group comparisons remaining significant after false discovery rate adjustment ( p p = 0.002) and CSF p-tau181 (β = 3.2, 95% CI 1.4-5.0, p = 0.001). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 731
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Full text may need a subscription
Unlike pNfL, which was increased similarly in both clinical groups, pGFAP was increased in FTD but lower than in AD (all P < 0.01). 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 211
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Plasma p-tau217 and p-tau217/Aβ42 concentrations demonstrated robust diagnostic performance in a heterogeneous clinical cohort; interpretation requires consideration of kidney function. 5 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 509
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Free full text
P-tau181 detected AD at MCI and dementia stages and was strongly associated with cognitive decline and gray matter loss. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
How the 0–100 score works — and why some entries are capped
This is alzhub's own score. It is not an official metric, not an impact factor,
and no journal, publisher or ranking body endorses it. We built it so that a reader who is not a
scientist can tell a landmark trial from a conference abstract without having to already know the
difference. Every point comes from one of 20 components, all of them printed on the study itself,
so you can disagree with our arithmetic rather than having to trust the total.
- Journal tier up to 10 pts
- Journal's citation record up to 4 pts
- Study design up to 12 pts
- Strength of evidence up to 5 pts
- Peer-review validation up to 10 pts
- How recent up to 5 pts
- Sample size up to 4 pts
- Effect reported up to 3 pts
- Studied in people up to 3 pts
- Randomized / blinded up to 2 pts
- Times cited up to 7 pts
- Citations per year up to 5 pts
- Impact for its field and year up to 6 pts
- Cited by studies here up to 6 pts
- Still being cited up to 4 pts
- Senior author's track record up to 4 pts
- Institution's track record up to 3 pts
- Multicenter collaboration up to 3 pts
- Indexed in PubMed up to 2 pts
- Free to read up to 2 pts
Journals are placed in ordered tiers, never given a numeric impact factor — we
could not verify current impact factors from a source we control, and an invented one would be
worse than none. Tier 1 is the top-tier general journals (NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, Nature, Science,
Nature Medicine); tier 2 is the leading specialty journals; tier 3 is every other peer-reviewed
journal. A separate part scores how much the journal's own papers are cited, which tells the
tier-3 journals apart.
Two rules we don't bend. First, we never fill in a
missing value: if a record does not state a sample size or a design, that component scores
zero, and if we simply have no data for a part, such as a citation count, that part is left out and
the study is scored on the parts we could check. The study card says which. Second, anything that is not a peer-reviewed
article is capped at 16/100 and carries a warning chip — so a conference abstract or
a company press release can never outrank a peer-reviewed paper, no matter how good it looks.
We rank a rigorous null result — a good trial showing that something does not
work — above an early positive finding. Someone deciding whether to buy a supplement is served by
that, and the rigour is already counted by the design and journal components.
The score is computed from the published data alone and is
reproducible: the same file always yields the same numbers.
See the whole rubric drawn out →
— four charts covering all 31,780 studies: how the scores are spread and where the cap
bites, which of the 20 components the library is strong and weak on, which subjects rest on
stronger evidence, and what kinds of study each subject is actually built from.