Thirty-three randomized controlled trials were identified evaluating 15,971 participants (9,103 (57%) female). 5 key findings →
Participants: 15,971 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Research
31,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Memantine monotherapy improved cognition, behavior, activities of daily living, global function, and stage of dementia and was well-tolerated by AD patients. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 2,433 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Galantamine failed to significantly influence conversion to dementia. 3 key findings →
Participants: 2,048 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The analysis included 8 randomized placebo-controlled trials with 6547 participants. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 6,547 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Seventeen RCTs, comprising 7214 participants, investigated the efficacy of the following drugs: Donepezil, Rivastigmine, Galantamine, Memantine, Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb), Atorvastatin-calcium and Vitamin B in the treatment of AD. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 7,214 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
We screened 18,884 papers and included 135 studies. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 135 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Three donepezil, two galantamine, one rivastigmine, and two memantine trials, comprising 3093 patients on the study drugs and 2090 patients on placebo, met the selection criteria. 2 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 3,093 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In total, 994 patients received cholinesterase inhibitor treatment (rivastigmine, n = 495; donepezil, n = 499), and 57.9% of patients completed the study. 5 key findings →
Participants: 495 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Donepezil has significant efficacy in the treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with mild to moderate AD. 4 key findings →
Design: open-label trial Participants: 134 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Cholinergic dysfunction is also associated with neuropsychiatric and functional deficits, but results from randomized controlled trials of cholinesterase inhibitors are conflicting. 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 29 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The meta-analyses suggest the credible efficacy and safety of memantine in treating AD when used alone or in combination with ChEIs. 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 7,567 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Inclusion criteria were early AD (mini-mental state examination [MMSE] score between 20 and 26 points or Alzheimer's disease assessment scale-cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) score between 10 and 25 points), taking a stable dose of acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (donepezil, galantamine, or rivastigmine) for at least 4 months, a modified Hachinski score of 4 points or less, and CT or MRI results that were consistent with AD. 3 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 78 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
75/100
There were 132 846 individuals (mean [SD] age, 80.4 [7.6] years; 61.8% women; mean [SD] body mass index [BMI], 25.5 [4.6]) with a diagnosis of dementia included in cohort 1, 159 419 individuals (mean [SD] age, 81.2 [7.6] years; 59.7% women; mean [SD] body mass index [BMI], 25.6 [4.7]) with a diagnosis of dementia included in cohort 2, and 92 328 individuals with a diagnosis of dementia included in cohort 3 (mean [SD] age, 80.9 [7.7] years; 58.5% women; mean [SD] body mass index [BMI], 25.5 [4.7]). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 846 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
This study evaluated the efficacy and safety of donepezil in patients with mild to moderately severe Alzheimer's disease, and examined the relationships between plasma donepezil concentration, red blood cell acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity and clinical response. 5 key findings →
Participants: 161 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
No evidence of efficacy of 2 mg or 8 mg RSG XR monotherapy in cognition or global function was detected in the APOE-ε4-negative or other analysis populations. 2 key findings →
Design: open-label trial Participants: 693 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Treatment with ChEIs results in a modest but significant therapeutic effect and modestly but significantly higher rates of adverse events and discontinuation of treatment. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 5,159 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The target dose of 10 cm2 rivastigmine patch provides efficacy similar to the highest doses of capsules with a superior tolerability profile. 2 key findings →
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In this 12-week trial, donepezil was not more effective than placebo in treating agitation in patients with Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →
Participants: 272 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The study included 524,975 older adults with dementia who were incident users of ChEIs (donepezil 80.72%, rivastigmine 16.41%, galantamine 2.87%). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 524,975 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
73/100
The study included 47,059 older adults with dementia who were incident users of AChEIs. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 47,059 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The study cohort consisted of 178,441 older adults with dementia who were new users of ChEIs. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 23,433 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
95 patients assigned donepezil and 99 patients assigned placebo completed the study. 1 key finding →
Participants: 128 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
This pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, escalating dose trial explored the safety and efficacy of tideglusib, an inhibitor of glycogen synthase kinase-3, in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. 2 key findings →
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
All drugs improved the cognitive function, with the effect value ranging from -1.23 (95% CI -2.17 to -0.30) for 20 mg memantine to -3.29 (95% CI -4.14 to -2.45) for 32 mg galantamine. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects millions of people worldwide. 2 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
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 31,380 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 31,380 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (65.6% of the library) and OpenAlex (16.2%), 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.
1,048 records (3.3% of the library) are not peer-reviewed — 973 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 →
Newest studies, as a dated timeline → Atom feed Where this research is being discussed: events