27,780 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
APOE ɛ4, the most significant genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD), may mask effects of other loci. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 4,203 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a complex disorder characterised by a broad range of clinical manifestations, differential pathological signatures, and genetic variability. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 3,526 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We found a sequence to pathological changes, with rates of Aβ deposition in mutation carriers being significantly different from those in non-carriers first (across regions that showed a significant difference, at a mean of 18·9 years [SD 3·3] before expected onset), followed by hypometabolism (14·1 years [5·1] before expected onset), and lastly structural decline (4·7 years [4·2] before expected onset). 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 346 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Significant proportions of the observed variance in age at symptom onset in ADAD can be explained by family history and mutation type, providing empirical support for use of these data to estimate onset in clinical research. 2 key findings →
Participants: 3,275 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Frontotemporal lobar degeneration with neuronal inclusions of the TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (FTLD-TDP) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder with only a limited number of risk loci identified. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 985 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) and phosphorylated tau (pTau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) reflect core features of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) more directly than clinical diagnosis. 2 key findings →
Participants: 8,074 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Although studies in animal models suggest that TREM2 is protective against Alzheimer's pathology, its effect on tau pathology and its potential beneficial role in people with Alzheimer's disease is still unclear. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 155 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Coding variants in the triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) are associated with late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Periventricular white matter hyperintensities (WMH; PVWMH) and deep WMH (DWMH) are regional classifications of WMH and reflect proposed differences in cause. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 26,654 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
TREM2 is a transmembrane receptor that is predominantly expressed by microglia in the central nervous system. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 1,027 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Data from 3960 MRI sessions among 1141 participants were included: 252 pathogenic variant carriers from DIAN (mean [SD] age, 38.4 [11.2] years; 137 [54%] female), 571 older adults from ADNI (mean [SD] age, 72.8 [7.3] years; 274 [48%] female), and 318 older adults from HABS (mean [SD] age, 72.4 [7.6] years; 194 [61%] female). 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 1,141 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is the second most common cause of presenile dementia. 1 key finding →
Participants: 515 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
This study undertook a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Alzheimer's disease involving over 16,000 individuals. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The authors sought to identify new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer's disease through a staged association study and by testing suggestive loci reported by the Alzheimer's Disease Genetic Consortium in a companion paper. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We conducted a genome-wide association study among 2,323 individuals with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and 9,013 control subjects and evaluated all SNPs with P < 1.0 x 10(-4) in a second, independent cohort of 2,532 affected individuals and 5,940 controls. 1 key finding →
Participants: 2,323 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are likely to be most beneficial when initiated in the presymptomatic phase. 2 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 567 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Genetic variants within the VCAN gene may play a role in the mechanisms underlying microstructural integrity of the white matter in the brain measured as FA and MD. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 8,448 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Microglia play a pivotal role in the maintenance of brain homeostasis but lose homeostatic function during neurodegenerative disorders. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a common, fatal motor neuron disorder with no effective treatment. 4 key findings →
Participants: 111 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Common variants within TMEM106B are associated with risk for frontotemporal lobar degeneration with TDP-43 pathology (FTLD-TDP). 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 518 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
A summary measure of γ-secretase activity (γ-secretase composite [GSC]) was calculated for each variant and compared with clinical history-derived AAO using correlation analyses. 3 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 190 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (i.e. ApoE4) is the strongest genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 221 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
A polygenic score (PGS) for Alzheimer's disease (AD) was derived recently from data on genome-wide significant loci in European ancestry populations. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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
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.
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 27,780 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.
This is a large sample of the Alzheimer's literature, not an exhaustive index of it. It holds 27,780 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (61.1% of the library) and OpenAlex (18.3%), 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.
1,034 records (3.7% 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 →