Get help now — free helplines

You can call any of these for free. You do not need a diagnosis, an appointment, or a crisis to call — questions and plain exhaustion are reasons enough.

  • Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline 800-272-3900 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Free, confidential support and information for people with dementia, caregivers, families and the public. Master's-level clinicians. Also Spanish.
  • 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 988 24/7 Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. For anyone in emotional distress or a mental-health crisis, including caregivers.
  • Alzheimer's Foundation of America (AFA) Helpline 866-232-8484 9:00 am - 9:00 pm ET, seven days a week Licensed social workers providing support, info and referrals. Also text message and web chat. Text: 646-586-5283

In a medical emergency, call 911. More numbers, and what each line does, on the help page.

Find studies

Showing 1–25 of 89 studies with an author at Massachusetts General Hospital (US) (page 1 of 4) · 27,780 in the whole library · How the 0–100 score works

Download bibliography of these 89 studies, in this order: BibTeX (.bib) · RIS (.ris)

Showing 89 studies tagged precursor — clear

Browse by subject, author or institution

Each number is how many studies that link shows, with your other filters kept.

A note on reading research. One study is rarely the final word.

We try to note the size of a study, whether it was in humans or animals, and how early-stage the finding is. If a summary here doesn't make that clear, treat it with extra caution and check the original source.

Risk for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD), the most prevalent dementia, is partially driven by genetics. 5 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 94,437 Evidence: high

The Alzheimer Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC) performed a genome-wide association study of late-onset Alzheimer disease using a three-stage design consisting of a discovery stage (stage 1) and two replication stages (stages 2 and 3). 1 key finding →

Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high

Using cross-population GWAS meta-analyses, we identify novel LOAD susceptibility loci in/near LRRC4C and LHX5-AS1, both with known roles in neuronal development, as well as several novel population-unique loci. 1 key finding →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 409,589 Evidence: high

APOE3 Christchurch Heterozygosity and Autosomal Dominant Alzheimer's Disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 72 out of 100. New England Journal of Medicine 2024-06-20

Clinical data supported a delayed onset of cognitive impairment in persons who were heterozygous for the APOE3 Ch variant in a kindred with a high prevalence of autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →

Design: cohort Participants: 1,077 Evidence: moderate

Analysis confirmed the association of APOE with earlier AAO (P = 3.3 × 10(-96)), with associations in CR1 (rs6701713, P = 7.2 × 10(-4)), BIN1 (rs7561528, P = 4.8 × 10(-4)), and PICALM (rs561655, P = 2.2 × 10(-3)) reaching statistical significance (P Conclusions and relevance We confirmed an association of APOE (OMIM 107741) variants with AAO among affected participants with LOAD and observed novel associations of CR1 (OMIM 120620), BIN1 (OMIM 601248), and PICALM (OMIM 603025) with AAO. 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 9,162 Evidence: high

The largest cohort, the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer Disease Study (n = 3154), was the PET screening cohort used for a secondary prevention trial designed to slow cognitive decline associated with brain amyloidosis. 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 3,154 Evidence: high

Parietal cortex RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data were generated from individuals with and without Alzheimer disease (AD; n control = 13; n AD = 83) from the Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center (Knight ADRC). 3 key findings →

Evidence: low

APOE4 homozygozity represents a distinct genetic form of Alzheimer's disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 69 out of 100. Nature medicine 2024-05-06

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of APOE4 homozygosity on Alzheimer's disease (AD) by examining its clinical, pathological and biomarker changes to see whether APOE4 homozygotes constitute a distinct, genetically determined form of AD. 2 key findings →

Participants: 3,297 Evidence: low

Etiology of White Matter Hyperintensities in Autosomal Dominant and Sporadic Alzheimer Disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100. JAMA neurology 2023-12-01

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

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

Amyloid is linked to cognitive decline in patients with Parkinson disease without dementia

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 63 out of 100. Neurology 2012-12-12

At baseline measurements, amyloid burden does not distinguish between cognitively impaired and unimpaired subjects with PD without dementia, but our data suggest that amyloid contributes to cognitive, but not motor, decline over time. 3 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 46 Evidence: moderate

Cross-sectional functional magnetic resonance imaging studies using a memory task in patients with mild cognitive impairment have produced discordant results, with some studies reporting increased hippocampal activity--consistent with findings in genetic at-risk populations--and other studies reporting decreased hippocampal activity, relative to normal controls. 3 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 33 Evidence: moderate

Although it is clear that astrocytes and microglia cluster around dense-core amyloid plaques in Alzheimer disease (AD), whether they are primarily attracted to amyloid deposits or are just reacting to plaque-associated neuritic damage remains elusive. 4 key findings →

Evidence: low

Gene Dose of Apolipoprotein E Type 4 Allele and the Risk of Alzheimer's Disease in Late Onset Families

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 63 out of 100. Science 1993-08-13

The apolipoprotein E type 4 allele (APOE-epsilon 4) is genetically associated with the common late onset familial and sporadic forms of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

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

Plasma beta-amyloid and white matter lesions in AD, MCI, and cerebral amyloid angiopathy

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 62 out of 100. Neurology 2006-01-01

If confirmed in longitudinal studies, these data would suggest circulating beta-amyloid peptide as a novel biomarker or risk factor for microvascular damage in these common diseases of the elderly. 2 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 54 Evidence: moderate

Each additional copy of the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) allele is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's dementia, while the APOE2 allele is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's dementia, it is not yet known whether APOE2 homozygotes have a particularly low risk. 2 key findings →

Evidence: low

The entorhinal cortex (EC) plays a crucial role as a gateway connecting the neocortex and the hippocampal formation. 4 key findings →

Participants: 20 Evidence: low

↑ Change the filters

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 27,780 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.

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 27,780 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 →

Newest studies, as a dated timeline →    Atom feed