Key points Lower kidney function is associated with higher concentrations of blood biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 62,503
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The analyzed parameters differentiate between controls and CAA with clinically useful accuracy (AUC > ∼0.85) but not between CAA and AD. 1 key finding →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 31
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The core biomarkers differentiated Alzheimer's disease from controls with good performance: CSF T-tau (average ratio 2·54, 95% CI 2·44-2·64, p Interpretation The core CSF biomarkers of neurodegeneration (T-tau, P-tau, and Aβ42), CSF NFL, and plasma T-tau were strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease and the core biomarkers were strongly associated with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease. 2 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 699
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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Plasma Aβ40 values might not distinguish between PET (+) and PET (-) people. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 3,047
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
79/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 79 out of 100.
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JAMA
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2024-10-15
Plasma biomarkers of AD neuropathology, neuronal injury, and astrogliosis increase with age and are associated with known dementia risk factors. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 1,525
Evidence: high
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Original source
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79/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 79 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
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2023-04-01
Among 171 Aβ-positive CU participants included in the main analyses, 119 (mean [SD] age, 73.0 [5.4] years; 60.5% female) were from the BioFINDER-1 study, and 52 (mean [SD] age, 64.4 [4.6] years; 65.4% female) were from the WRAP study. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 564
Evidence: moderate
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Original source
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CSF Aβ42, t-tau, p-tau, tau/Aβ42; peripheral blood t-tau, Aβ42/Aβ40, NFL; whole, left and right HV, EC volume, MTA, 18 F-FDG PET, 11 C-PIB PET; APOE ε4 may be promising prospective biomarkers for AD progression. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 70
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Lower baseline C3 was consistently associated with ARIA risk across sensitivity analyses and higher baseline C1q with smaller amyloid reduction at week 26. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 62
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
77/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 77 out of 100.
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JAMA Neurology
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2024-01-01
Of a total 912 participants, there were 499 males (54.7%) and 413 females (45.3%), and the mean (SD) age was 71.1 (8.49) years. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 912
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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77/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 77 out of 100.
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Nature medicine
·
2025-03-31
Rates of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are extremely heterogeneous. 1 key finding →
Design: case-control study
Participants: 3,397
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
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2019-07-01
The NfL level was increased at baseline in patients with mild cognitive impairment and AD dementia (mean levels: cognitive unimpairment, 32.1 ng/L; mild cognitive impairment, 37.9 ng/L; and AD dementia, 45.9 ng/L; P Conclusions and relevance The findings suggest that plasma NfL can be used as a noninvasive biomarker associated with neurodegeneration in patients with AD and may be useful to monitor effects in trials of disease-modifying drugs. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 1,583
Evidence: moderate
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Original source
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75/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 75 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
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2017-05-01
Among 193 cognitively healthy controls, 197 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 180 patients with AD with dementia, plasma NFL correlated with CSF NFL (Spearman ρ = 0.59, P Conclusions and relevance Plasma NFL is associated with AD diagnosis and with cognitive, biochemical, and imaging hallmarks of the disease. 3 key findings →
Design: case-control study
Participants: 197
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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75/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 75 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
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2021-12-01
This study suggests that plasma GFAP is a sensitive biomarker for detecting and tracking reactive astrogliosis and Aβ pathology even among individuals in the early stages of AD. 5 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 300
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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75/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 75 out of 100.
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JAMA
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2009-07-01
During follow-up, 271 participants with MCI were diagnosed with AD and 59 with other dementias. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 750
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) p-tau181 (tau phosphorylated at threonine 181) is an established biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD), reflecting abnormal tau metabolism in the brain. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 194
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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Nature medicine
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2019-01-21
Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a promising fluid biomarker of disease progression for various cerebral proteopathies. 2 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 187
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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Nature medicine
·
2024-02-21
With the emergence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) disease-modifying therapies, identifying patients who could benefit from these treatments becomes critical. 1 key finding →
Participants: 1,422
Evidence: moderate
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Original source
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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Neurology
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2021-06-14
Despite significant progress, applications of astrocyte biomarkers in AD remain in their early days. 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 3,204
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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We performed a meta-analysis to examine the aggregate levels of serum BDNF in patients with AD and individuals with MCI, in comparison with healthy controls. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 2,067
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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Neurology
·
2026-10-16
Midlife p-tau181 was associated with faster 11-year memory decline beginning 20 years later in the ARIC cohort, which underscores a potentially long prodromal phase of cognitive decline that could precede dementia onset. 5 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort
Participants: 920
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Weight loss predicts AD CSF and PET biomarker results and may occur downstream to amyloid-β accumulation in preclinical AD, paralleling cognitive decline. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 2,743
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
As the field moves towards primary prevention, we expect an increase in the use of fluid-based biomarkers to determine disease modification. 4 key findings →
Participants: 121
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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BMJ open
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2026-02-23
The human voice has emerged as a promising digital biomarker, with vocal characteristics reflecting physiological and cognitive changes associated with conditions like dementia and Parkinson's disease. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The body of evidence for biomarkers is not large and is variable across the different types of biomarkers. 1 key finding →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 70
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
73/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100.
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JAMA network open
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2025-02-03
The mean (SD) baseline age of 758 participants was 61.5 (6.1) years, and 424 participants [55.9%] were female. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 758
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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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 30,980 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.