89/100
Eight studies with 377,060 subjects were included in the analysis. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 377,060 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Research
27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Fifty-eight of 77 patients (75.3%) completed the trial. 5 key findings →
Participants: 77 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Our sample had a mean age of 66.8 (SD = 5.3) years, a mean HAM-D score of 19.4 (SD = 7.5), and a mean PHQ-9 score of 18.0 (SD = 6.3). 5 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 28 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
A total of seven studies were included. The forest plot results showed that taking lithium therapy reduced the risk of AD (RR 0.59, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.44-0.78) and is also protective in reducing the risk of dementia (RR 0.66, 95% CI: 0.56-0.77). 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Participants in the placebo group displayed cognitive and functional decline, whereas lithium-treated patients remained stable over 2 years. 4 key findings →
Participants: 61 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
75/100
BDNF levels did not change significantly and were not associated with improvement in overall neuropsychiatric symptoms or in cognitive function. 2 key findings →
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Of 8171 patients with late-life depression, 1443 (17.7 %) had TRLLD. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 8,171 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Twenty-one depressed patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were randomized to receive a 6-week treatment with clomipramine or placebo in a study with a double-blind crossover design. 3 key findings →
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Late-life depression (LLD), compared to depression at a young age, is more likely to have poor prognosis and high risk of progression to dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The results indicate that lithium treatment may have beneficial effects on cognitive performance in subjects with MCI and AD dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 199 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The present data support the notion that lithium has disease-modifying properties with potential clinical implications in the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. 2 key findings →
Participants: 24 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
We carried out systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate whether peripheral levels of pro-inflammatory markers including Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumor Necrosis Factor-α (TNF- α) and C-Reactive Protein (CRP) are significantly higher in elderly with depression and Alzheimer's disease. 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
We identified 63,347 cases with Alzheimer's disease and 126,694 controls. 5 key findings →
Design: case-control study Participants: 63,347 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
While most studies to date have been cross-sectional, limiting the establishment of causal relationships, the potential benefits of trace lithium for suicide prevention and dementia prevention are notable, especially in the absence of radical treatments for suicide and dementia. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Cognitive dysfunction is common in late life depression (LLD) and is a major risk factor for dementia. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
A total of 73 731 patients with dementia and 733 653 controls (median age, 80.3 years; interquartile range, 74.9-84.6 years; 44 760 female [60.7%] and 28 971 male [39.3%]) were included in the study. 5 key findings →
Design: case-control study Participants: 731 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Late-life depression is associated with significant cognitive impairment. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In the full cohort, 9.4% were diagnosed with major depression and 8.6% had chronically elevated depressive symptoms, both of which were related to adverse cognitive outcomes. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 1,965 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
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 →