Among cognitively unimpaired participants with a family history of dementia, changes in cognition and brain MRI outcomes from baseline to year 3 did not differ significantly between those who followed the MIND diet and those who followed the control diet with mild caloric restriction. 5 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 604
Evidence: null result
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Modifiable vascular and lifestyle-related risk factors have been associated with dementia risk in observational studies. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Participants: 631
Evidence: high
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These findings suggest that a hearing intervention might reduce cognitive change over 3 years in populations of older adults at increased risk for cognitive decline but not in populations at decreased risk for cognitive decline. 5 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Participants: 858
Evidence: high
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Epidemiologic studies suggest that a Mediterranean diet, an antioxidant-rich cardioprotective dietary pattern, delays cognitive decline, but clinical trial evidence is lacking. 5 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 447
Evidence: moderate
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82/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 82 out of 100.
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JAMA
·
2015-08-01
Among sedentary older adults, a 24-month moderate-intensity physical activity program compared with a health education program did not result in improvements in global or domain-specific cognitive function. 5 key findings →
Participants: 818
Evidence: high
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81/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 81 out of 100.
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JAMA Psychiatry
·
2023-06-01
Further studies are warranted to develop and refine the specific MIND diet for different populations. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 224,049
Evidence: moderate
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80/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 80 out of 100.
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JAMA Network Open
·
2024-02-05
In this meta-analysis of the association of physical activity with cognitive decline, physical activity was associated with better late-life cognition, but the association was weak. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 341,471
Evidence: moderate
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79/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 79 out of 100.
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JAMA Neurology
·
2023-02-01
In this meta-analysis, the usage of hearing restorative devices by participants with hearing loss was associated with a 19% decrease in hazards of long-term cognitive decline. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 137,484
Evidence: moderate
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An intervention with MedDiets enhanced with either EVOO or nuts appears to improve cognition compared with a low-fat diet. 5 key findings →
Participants: 522
Evidence: high
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The FINGER intervention was beneficial regardless of participants' characteristics and can thus be implemented in a large elderly population at increased risk for dementia. 3 key findings →
Participants: 1,260
Evidence: high
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77/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 77 out of 100.
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PLoS medicine
·
2019-07-23
With no effective treatments for cognitive decline or dementia, improving the evidence base for modifiable risk factors is a research priority. 1 key finding →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 48,522
Evidence: high
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76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
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JAMA
·
2025-08-26
This randomized trial followed 2,111 older adults at risk for cognitive decline across 5 US sites for two years, comparing a highly structured lifestyle program (regular exercise, MIND diet, cognitive/social engagement, health coaching) against a lower-intensity, self-guided version of the same components. 4 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 2,111
Evidence: moderate
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76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
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Neurology
·
2025-02-11
This long-term follow-up of the SPRINT randomized trial tested whether intensively lowering systolic blood pressure (to below 120, vs. the standard target of below 140) reduces the risk of thinking problems in adults 50+ with hypertension. 4 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 9,361
Evidence: moderate
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The FINGER is at the forefront of international collaborative efforts to solve the clinical and public health problems of early identification of individuals at increased risk of late-life cognitive impairment, and of developing intervention strategies to prevent or delay the onset of cognitive impairment and dementia. 3 key findings →
Participants: 1,200
Evidence: high
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76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
·
PLoS medicine
·
2017-03-21
We also determined the extent to which sex, educational attainment, and apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (APOE*4) carrier status were associated with decline. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 42,170
Evidence: moderate
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133 systematic reviews (2,724 RCTs and 258 279 participants) were included. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 279
Evidence: high
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There is moderate-to-strong support that PA benefits cognitive functioning during early and late periods of the life span and in certain populations characterized by cognitive deficits. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
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Adherence to a Mediterranean diet may contribute to the prevention of a series of brain diseases; this may be of special value given the aging of Western societies. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
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75/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 75 out of 100.
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JAMA
·
2025-08-01
Among older adults at risk of cognitive decline and dementia, a structured, higher-intensity intervention had a statistically significant greater benefit on global cognition compared with an unstructured, self-guided intervention. 5 key findings →
Participants: 1,056
Evidence: high
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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The Lancet
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2015-03-12
This Finnish randomized controlled trial was the first large study to show that a two-year program combining diet counseling, exercise, cognitive training, and monitoring of heart-health risk factors could help maintain or improve thinking skills in older adults at elevated dementia risk, compared with a control group who received only general health advice. 3 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 1,260
Evidence: high
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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Ophthalmology
·
2024-08
This meta-analysis pooled data from 24 observational studies covering over half a million older adults to ask whether cataract surgery is associated with lower long-term cognitive decline compared with leaving cataracts untreated. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 558,000
Evidence: moderate
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Also, we performed analyses including only trials in which an increase in the cardiovascular fitness of participants had been demonstrated. 5 key findings →
Participants: 754
Evidence: high
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A long-term intervention with an EVOO-rich MedDiet resulted in a better cognitive function in comparison with a control diet. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Participants: 285
Evidence: high
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73/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100.
·
The Lancet
·
2023-09-02
This randomized trial gave hearing aids plus counseling, or only general health education, to 977 older adults with untreated hearing loss, then tracked cognition for three years. 4 key findings →
Design: RCT
Participants: 977
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
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Five RCTs of the Mediterranean diet and cognition have been published to date. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 1,888
Evidence: high
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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 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.