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Research

27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.

Find studies

Showing 1–25 of 54 studies in Risk factors (page 1 of 3) · 27,380 in the whole library · How the 0–100 score works

Showing 54 studies tagged vessel — clear

Browse by subject, author or institution

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

Other subjects

Authors

Names as each record prints them; the same person can appear under two spellings.

Institutions

From OpenAlex; 12,859 studies have no institution on record and are not counted here.

What “Risk factors” covers

Risk factors — Conditions, exposures and habits linked to a higher or lower chance of dementia, and how strong each link is.

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.

Relation of C-reactive protein to stroke, cognitive disorders, and depression in the general population: systematic review and meta-analysis

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 66 out of 100. The Lancet. Neurology 2005-06-01

Evidence suggests that a high concentration of C-reactive protein (CRP) is a cardiovascular risk factor and an important correlate of cognitive disorders and depression. 4 key findings →

Design: systematic review Evidence: high

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription

Longitudinal Changes in Brain Diffusion Characteristics Associated With Cognition and Vascular Risk Factors

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100. Neurology 2025-07-24

= 0.009). Significant differences in annualized changes in these FA and MD values were found depending on the presence or absence of type 2 diabetes and smoking. 4 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 6,471 Evidence: moderate

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Arterial stiffness, pressure and flow pulsatility and brain structure and function: the Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility--Reykjavik study

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 63 out of 100. Brain : a journal of neurology 2011-11-01

Aortic stiffness increases with age and vascular risk factor exposure and is associated with increased risk for structural and functional abnormalities in the brain. 5 key findings →

Participants: 668 Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Identification of White Matter Hyperintensities in Routine Emergency Department Visits Using Portable Bedside Magnetic Resonance Imaging

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 62 out of 100. Journal of the American Heart Association 2023-05-23

Portable, low‐field imaging could be useful for identifying moderate to severe WMHs. 4 key findings →

Design: prospective cohort Participants: 33 Evidence: moderate

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Homocysteine, silent brain infarcts, and white matter lesions: The Rotterdam Scan Study

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 61 out of 100. Annals of neurology 2002-03-01

Silent brain infarcts and white matter lesions are frequently seen on magnetic resonance imaging in healthy elderly people and both are associated with an increased risk of stroke and dementia. 5 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 1,077 Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription

White matter hyperintensity spatial patterns: Risk factors and clinical correlates

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 61 out of 100. Alzheimer s & Dementia 2025-04-01

WMHs in the frontoparietal and anterior periventricular region were associated with blood pressure traits, WMH genetic risk score (GRS), baseline and decline in general cognitive performance, incident all-cause dementia, and ischemic stroke. 5 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 2,878 Evidence: moderate

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Adverse Social Exposome During the Life Course and Vascular Brain Injury

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 60 out of 100. JAMA Network Open 2025-05-27

The sample included 740 donors (417 female [56.4%]; mean [SD] age at death, 81.5 [10.3] years; mean [SD] VBI score, 0.7 [1.0]; and median life course ADI, 7.08 [IQR, 4.33-9.83]), with residential years spanning 1905 to 2018. 5 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 740 Evidence: moderate

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Severity of dilated Virchow-Robin spaces is associated with age, blood pressure, and MRI markers of small vessel disease: a population-based study

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 59 out of 100. Stroke 2010-09-23

In this large cohort study of elderly subjects, the degree of dVRS appears independently associated with age, hypertension, volume of white matter hyperintensities, and lacunar infarctions. dVRS should be considered as another MRI marker of cerebral small vessel disease in the elderly with regional variations in their severity. 4 key findings →

Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription

The association between blood pressure, hypertension, and cerebral white matter lesions: cardiovascular determinants of dementia study

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 59 out of 100. Hypertension (Dallas, Tex. : 1979) 2004-10-04

Cerebral white matter lesions are frequently observed on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in elderly people and are associated with stroke and dementia. 5 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 1,625 Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy maps to chromosome 19q12

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 57 out of 100. Nature genetics 1993-03-01

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) has been recently reported as a cause of stroke. 5 key findings →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription

Traumatic Brain Injury and Risk of Neurodegenerative Disorder

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 56 out of 100. Biological psychiatry 2021-06-02

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly of greater severity (i.e., moderate to severe), has been identified as a risk factor for all-cause dementia and Parkinson's disease, with risk for specific dementia subtypes being more variable. 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Pathophysiology and probable etiology of cerebral small vessel disease in vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 56 out of 100. Molecular neurodegeneration 2023-07-11

Vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) is commonly caused by vascular injuries in cerebral large and small vessels and is a key driver of age-related cognitive decline. 5 key findings →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Brain Insulin Resistance at the Crossroads of Metabolic and Cognitive Disorders in Humans

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 51 out of 100. Physiological reviews 2016-08-03

Ever since the brain was identified as an insulin-sensitive organ, evidence has rapidly accumulated that insulin action in the brain produces multiple behavioral and metabolic effects, influencing eating behavior, peripheral metabolism, and cognition. 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription

Glymphatic System Impairment in Alzheimer's Disease and Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 51 out of 100. Trends in molecular medicine 2020-01-18

Approximately 10% of dementia patients have idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH), an expansion of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-filled brain ventricles. iNPH and Alzheimer's disease (AD) both exhibit sleep disturbances, build-up of brain metabolic wastes and amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques, perivascular reactive astrogliosis, and mislocalization of astrocyte aquaporin-4 (AQP4). 4 key findings →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

Perivascular macrophages mediate the neurovascular and cognitive dysfunction associated with hypertension

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 51 out of 100. The Journal of clinical investigation 2016-11-14

Hypertension is a leading risk factor for dementia, but the mechanisms underlying its damaging effects on the brain are poorly understood. 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text

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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 →

Newest studies, as a dated timeline →    Atom feed