Get help now — free helplines

You can call any of these for free. You do not need a diagnosis, an appointment, or a crisis to call — questions and plain exhaustion are reasons enough.

  • Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline 800-272-3900 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Free, confidential support and information for people with dementia, caregivers, families and the public. Master's-level clinicians. Also Spanish.
  • 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 988 24/7 Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. For anyone in emotional distress or a mental-health crisis, including caregivers.
  • Alzheimer's Foundation of America (AFA) Helpline 866-232-8484 9:00 am - 9:00 pm ET, seven days a week Licensed social workers providing support, info and referrals. Also text message and web chat. Text: 646-586-5283

In a medical emergency, call 911. More numbers, and what each line does, on the help page.

Find studies

A note on reading research. One study is rarely the final word.

We try to note the size of a study, whether it was in humans or animals, and how early-stage the finding is. If a summary here doesn't make that clear, treat it with extra caution and check the original source.

Across the brain, people with Down syndrome had greater concentrations of tau for a given level of amyloid compared with people with autosomal-dominant Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 137 Evidence: moderate

Detection of Brain Tau Pathology in Down Syndrome Using Plasma Biomarkers

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 64 out of 100. JAMA neurology 2022-08-01

Among 300 participants with DS and a control group of 37 non-DS siblings, mean (SD) age was 45.0 (10.1) years, and 167 (49.6%) were men. 4 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 300 Evidence: low

Individuals with Down syndrome over age 40 years are at risk for developing dementia of the Alzheimer type and have evidence for chronic oxidative stress. 4 key findings →

Participants: 53 Evidence: high

Adults with Down syndrome demonstrate striatum-first amyloid accumulation with [ 11 C]PiB PET imaging, which has not been replicated with [ 18 F]florbetapir (FBP). 4 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 175 Evidence: moderate

Due to trisomy of chromosome 21 and the resultant extra copy of the amyloid precursor protein gene, nearly all adults with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer's disease pathology by the age of 40 years and are at high risk for dementia given their increased life expectancy compared with adults with Down syndrome in the past. 1 key finding →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 41 Evidence: moderate

Global PET amyloid burden was compared with regards to cognitive status, APOE ɛ4 status, sex, age, and estimated years to symptom onset. 2 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 216 Evidence: low

Among adults with Down syndrome, the striatum consistently accumulates amyloid earlier than the cortex when measured with PiB. 2 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 175 Evidence: moderate

Alzheimer's disease associated with Down syndrome: a genetic form of dementia

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 59 out of 100. The Lancet. Neurology 2021-11-01

Adults with Down syndrome develop the neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease and are at very high risk of developing early-onset dementia, which is now the leading cause of death in this population. 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

Imaging and plasma biomarkers for pathological accumulation in Down syndrome

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 59 out of 100. Brain : a journal of neurology 2026-06-01

These results suggest that all adults with Down syndrome should be screened for Alzheimer's disease pathology starting shortly before age 40 years and considered for clinical trials. 1 key finding →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 328 Evidence: moderate

Characterizing the timing and progression of Alzheimer's disease biomarker onset in Down syndrome (DS) and contrasting potential timing differences with neurotypical adults is needed to identify optimal Alzheimer's disease therapeutic treatment windows in DS. 2 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 198 Evidence: moderate

Circadian Rest-Activity Rhythms, Cognition, and Alzheimer Disease Dementia in Adults With Down Syndrome

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 56 out of 100. Neurology 2026-05-07

Of 115 participants (mean age 40.0 ± 9.2 years; 43.5% female), higher interdaily stability was associated with higher DSMSE scores B = 20.6 (95% CI 5.0-36.2). 4 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 115 Evidence: low

Structured Abstract Introduction People with Down syndrome (DS) often develop Alzheimer disease (AD). 4 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 85 Evidence: moderate

Early increases in plasma NfL may reflect early white matter microstructural changes prior to dementia in DS. 2 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Evidence: low

Neuropathological measures of increased tau phosphorylation across the Down syndrome lifespan

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 48 out of 100. Acta neuropathologica 2026-03-22

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD), with nearly all individuals exhibiting AD neuropathology, including amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), by age 40 years. 5 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 98 Evidence: low

Preliminary Investigation of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Alzheimer's Disease in Down Syndrome

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 48 out of 100. Sleep 2025-07-23

This study provided a preliminary examination of indices of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and sleep disruptions in adults with Down syndrome (DS), and their associations with Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology and symptomatology. 3 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 22 Evidence: moderate

Adapting prescribing criteria for amyloid‐targeted antibodies for adults with Down syndrome

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 48 out of 100. Alzheimer s & Dementia 2024-03-13

Prior authorization criteria for Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved immunotherapeutics, among the class of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), established by state drug formulary committees, are tailored for adults with late-onset Alzheimer's disease. 5 key findings →

Evidence: low

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability in children, and the number of adults with DS reaching old age is increasing. 4 key findings →

Participants: 29 Evidence: low

↑ Change the filters

Where “Free full text” comes from

Free full text links and the Full text may need a subscription label come from Unpaywall, Europe PMC and OpenAlex records of free copies, checked 10 Oct 2026. A study with neither is unknown, not paywalled. Show only studies that are free to read

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
  • Randomised / 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
  • Multi-centre 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 27,380 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.

What this library is — and isn't

This is a large sample of the Alzheimer's literature, not an exhaustive index of it. It holds 27,380 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (60.6% of the library) and OpenAlex (18.6%), plus smaller pulls from PubMed, Crossref and medRxiv. If a study, a drug, or a finding isn't here, that is not evidence it doesn't exist in the literature — it may simply not have been pulled in yet.

1,032 records (3.8% of the library) are not peer-reviewed — 962 of those are preprints posted before any journal review, and the rest are conference abstracts, regulatory notices and reports. Every study card on this page states its status plainly, and the score above is capped for anything that isn't a peer-reviewed article.

See the full, machine-readable breakdown of this library's coverage →

Newest studies, as a dated timeline →    Atom feed