This represents the largest U.S.-based, multi-site, biomarker initiative of AD in DS. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 400 Evidence: moderate
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.
Across the brain, people with Down syndrome had greater concentrations of tau for a given level of amyloid compared with people with autosomal-dominant Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 137 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The objective of our study was to assess the efficacy and safety of donepezil in young adults with Down syndrome (DS) but no evidence of Alzheimer disease (AD). 2 key findings →
Design: open-label trial Participants: 123 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
These results suggest that all adults with Down syndrome should be screened for Alzheimer's disease pathology starting shortly before age 40 years and considered for clinical trials. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 328 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Of 115 participants (mean age 40.0 ± 9.2 years; 43.5% female), higher interdaily stability was associated with higher DSMSE scores B = 20.6 (95% CI 5.0-36.2). 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 115 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
These findings emphasize the necessity of tailoring mAb trials for DS, considering age-related AD characteristics. 5 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Demonstrated utility of the mCRT warrants further investigation into comparisons between the A and B versions, free versus cued recall and changes in performance over time to better understand sensitivity for tracking memory decline over time based on age and AD clinical status. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 272 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Disorders associated with early-life alterations in amyloid precursor protein production or processing are associated with a distinct pattern of early striatal fibrillary Aβ deposition before significant cognitive impairment. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The patterns of FDG decline are distinct in these 2 genetically determined forms of AD. 1 key finding →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 76 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
40/100
In adults with DS, early amyloid-β accumulation in the striatum is divergent from sporadic AD; however, despite the early striatal amyloid-β, glucose hypometabolism was confined to the typical AD-associated regions, which occurs similarly in autosomal dominant AD. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The majority of the participants met criteria for obesity. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Adults with Down syndrome (DS) are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 167 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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 →