Whilst cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and positron emission tomography (PET) biomarkers for amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau pathologies are accurate for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), their broad implementation in clinical and trial settings are restricted by high cost and limited accessibility. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 1,000
Evidence: moderate
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We evaluated the performance of CSF biomarkers for predicting risk of clinical decline and conversion to dementia in non-demented patients with cognitive symptoms. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 619
Evidence: moderate
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70/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 70 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2009-06-01
Early identification of patterns of abnormality is of fundamental importance for detecting disease onset and tracking progression. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 1,017
Evidence: moderate
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The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) is an ongoing, longitudinal, multicenter study designed to develop clinical, imaging, genetic, and biochemical biomarkers for the early detection and tracking of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 400
Evidence: moderate
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Brain iron elevation is implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis, but the impact of iron on disease outcomes has not been previously explored in a longitudinal study. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
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68/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 68 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2015-09-11
The cumulative incidence of cognitive impairment was 8.5% at year 1, increasing to 47.4% by year 6. 2 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort
Participants: 141
Evidence: moderate
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67/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
·
2016-01-01
Cerebrospinal fluid NFL concentration (median [interquartile range]) was higher in the AD dementia group (1479 [1134-1842] pg/mL), stable MCI group (no progression to AD during follow-up; 1182 [923-1687] pg/mL), and progressive MCI group (MCI with progression to AD dementia during follow-up; 1336 [1061-1693] pg/mL) compared with control participants (1047 [809-1265] pg/mL) (P Conclusions and relevance Cerebrospinal fluid NFL concentration is increased by the early clinical stage of AD and is associated with cognitive deterioration and structural brain changes over time. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 95
Evidence: moderate
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67/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2009-11-01
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, but not the Mini-Mental State Examination, has adequate psychometric properties as a screening instrument for the detection of mild cognitive impairment or dementia in Parkinson disease. 3 key findings →
Participants: 132
Evidence: low
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition marked by a decline in cognitive functions with no validated disease modifying treatment. 1 key finding →
Design: cross-sectional
Evidence: moderate
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Previous studies of Aβ plasma as a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease (AD) obtained conflicting results. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 715
Evidence: moderate
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Dementia is a frequent problem encountered in advanced stages of Parkinson disease (PD). 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
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65/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2010-09-01
MCI is common in patients with PD without dementia, affecting a range of cognitive domains, including memory, visual-spatial, and attention/executive abilities. 2 key findings →
Participants: 1,346
Evidence: moderate
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See Coulthard and Knight (doi:10.1093/aww335) for a scientific commentary on this article. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 530
Evidence: moderate
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Plasma p-tau217/Aβ42 had high accuracy to detect AD, with comparable performance across race. 2 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 1,135
Evidence: moderate
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64/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 64 out of 100.
·
NeuroImage
·
2011-07-28
Recent genetic and proteomic studies demonstrate that clusterin/apolipoprotein-J is associated with risk, pathology, and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 139
Evidence: moderate
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The apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is the best established genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease in later life, with the ε4 allele conferring higher risk. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 9,496
Evidence: moderate
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We used a new method of pooling cerebrospinal fluid Aβ42 and Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography measures to produce equivalent measures of brain Aβ load from either source and analysed the results using multiple imputation methods. 3 key findings →
Participants: 165
Evidence: low
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63/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 63 out of 100.
·
NeuroImage
·
2009-04-01
Tensor-based morphometry can recover three-dimensional longitudinal brain changes over time by nonlinearly registering baseline to follow-up MRI scans of the same subject. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 20
Evidence: moderate
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A challenge in developing informative neuroimaging biomarkers for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is the need to identify biomarkers that are evident before the onset of clinical symptoms, and which have sufficient sensitivity and specificity on an individual patient basis. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
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In Alzheimer's disease, post-mortem studies have shown that the first cortical site where neurofibrillary tangles appear is the transentorhinal region, a subregion within the medial temporal lobe that largely overlaps with Brodmann area 35, and the entorhinal cortex. 5 key findings →
Participants: 215
Evidence: low
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61/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 61 out of 100.
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Neurology
·
2009-07-01
MRI and CSF provide complimentary predictive information about time to conversion from amnestic mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer disease and combination of the 2 provides better prediction than either source alone. 3 key findings →
Participants: 399
Evidence: low
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Level of conscientiousness is a risk factor for Alzheimer disease. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 176
Evidence: moderate
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These data demonstrate that YKL-40, a putative indicator of neuroinflammation, is elevated in AD and, together with Aβ42, has potential prognostic utility as a biomarker for preclinical AD. 3 key findings →
Participants: 47
Evidence: moderate
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Mild cognitive impairment is common in nondemented Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and may be a harbinger of dementia. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
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At baseline and at follow-up MCI-AD showed higher levels P-tau(231), T-tau, IP, P-tau(231)/Abeta(42/40) and T-tau/Abeta(42/40) ratios and lower Abeta(42)/Abeta(40) than MCI-MCI or NL-NL. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 86
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
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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 30,580 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.