27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Compared with abstention, consumption of 1 to 6 drinks weekly is associated with a lower risk of incident dementia among older adults. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 5,888 Evidence: moderate
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Compared with no sensory impairment, DSI was associated with increased risk of all-cause dementia (hazard ratio [HR], 2.60; 95% CI, 1.66-2.06; P Conclusions and relevance In this cohort study, DSI was associated with increased risk of dementia, particularly AD. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 5,888 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Use of NSAIDs was associated with a lower risk of dementia (adjusted hazard ratio or aHR 0.76, 95% CI or CI 0.60-0.96) and, in particular, AD (aHR 0.63, CI 0.45-0.88), but not VaD (aHR 0.92, CI 0.65-1.28). 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 3,229 Evidence: moderate
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Arterial stiffness was associated with Aβ plaque deposition in the brain, independent of BP and APOE ε4 allele. 5 key findings →
Participants: 91 Evidence: moderate
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Classification resulted in 227 persons with prevalent dementia at entry into the study and 480 incident cases during follow-up. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 227 Evidence: moderate
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The CHS has developed a methodology for longitudinal studies of dementia in large cohorts and represents the largest study of dementia including cognitive testing, MRI and genetic markers. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 5,888 Evidence: moderate
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Brain atrophy with aging was observed in supratentorial and infratentorial areas, as well in primary motor, sensory, and heteromodal association regions. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 33 Evidence: moderate
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High BP accelerates gait slowing in well-functioning older adults over a long period of time, even for those who control their BP or develop hypertension later in life. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 2,733 Evidence: moderate
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Subclinical structural brain abnormalities in high-functioning older adults can increase the risk of developing physical disabilities and declining in motor performance. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 2,450 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
These results help explain the "obesity paradox" as differences in dementia risk across time are consistent with physical changes in the trajectory toward disability. 4 key findings →
Participants: 2,798 Evidence: low
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Plasma A beta levels are affected by age and by systemic and CNS vascular risk factors. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 55 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The late-life dementia risk index accurately stratified older adults into those with low, moderate, and high risk of developing dementia. 2 key findings →
Participants: 480 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Vascular disease in the brain is prevalent among incident dementia cases. 1 key finding →
Participants: 3,375 Evidence: low
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Obesity is associated with lower brain volumes in cognitively normal elderly subjects, but no study has yet investigated the effects of obesity on brain structure in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Participants: 399 Evidence: low
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These data suggest that having both diabetes and APOE epsilon4 increases the risk of dementia, especially for AD and mixed AD. 2 key findings →
Evidence: moderate
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Black race was associated with greater dementia risk even after adjustment for education and other potential confounders. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
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None of the clinical criteria for VaD identified the same group of subjects. 2 key findings →
Participants: 52 Evidence: low
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In the Cardiovascular Health Cognition Study, consumption of fatty fish was associated with a reduced risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease for those without the APOE epsilon4 allele. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
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High white matter grade (WMG) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a risk factor for dementia, stroke and disability. 5 key findings →
Participants: 3,245 Evidence: low
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Obesity is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular health problems including diabetes, hypertension, and stroke. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Renal impairment is associated with an increased risk of carotid atherosclerosis and stroke, determinants of cognitive dysfunction and dementia. 5 key findings →
Participants: 3,349 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Physical activity may help preserve cognitive function and decrease dementia risk, but epidemiologic findings are inconsistent. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
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We determined the relationship between apolipoprotein (Apo)E, MRI, and low cognitive scores. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
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Our data support the use of population-based cutpoints over standard cutoff scores, in that the global scale at the conventional cutoff was less sensitive than the battery at the same percentile, and because adequate norms do not exist for tests such as those in the battery. 1 key finding →
Participants: 1,367 Evidence: low
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Cognitively normal subjects with HTN (n=19) had decreased rCBF in the putamen, globus pallidus, bilaterally, and in the left hippocampus compared with normotensives (n=22). 1 key finding →
Participants: 19 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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
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.
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.
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 →