Costs were calculated using cost function figures compared with usual costs. 5 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 847 Evidence: high
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.
RO emphasised the engagement of nursing assistants in a hopeful, therapeutic process but became associated with a rigid, confrontational approach to people with dementia, leading to its use becoming less and less common. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 718 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We undertook subgroup analysis by setting (community versus care home) and by modality (individual versus group). 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 22 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Where appropriate, we undertook subgroup analysis by modality (individual versus group), number of sessions and frequency, setting (community versus care home), type of control condition and dementia severity. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 37 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
A recent Cochrane review of reality orientation therapy identified the need for large, well-designed, multi-centre trials. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 201 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
72/100
Older adults with hearing loss are at greater risk of dementia than those with normal hearing. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 7,865 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) is a well-established group psychosocial intervention for people with dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Cognitive stimulation therapy for people with dementia has effectiveness advantages over, and may be more cost-effective than, treatment as usual. 1 key finding →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 91 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Main results We identified no studies which met the inclusion criteria. 1 key finding →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Nineteen studies met our inclusion criteria and quality assessments. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Family carers' perceptions of BPSD as challenging are associated with a sense of a declining relationship, transgressions against social norms and underlying beliefs that people with dementia inevitably lose their 'personhood'. 2 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We recommend focusing on cognitive enhancement strategies, assessment and management of BPSD, and carer education and support to delay nursing home placement. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The evidence is not conclusive as to whether some BPSD impact caregiver well-being more than others. 1 key finding →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Many older people's crisis teams tend to focus on prevention and reducing psychiatric admissions. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Memory problems are a defining feature of the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Digital literacy may help reduce cognitive decline among persons aged between 50 and 89 years. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 6,442 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Twelve studies were identified. 2 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Using emotion-focussed coping strategies in response to caregiver burden seemed to protect caregivers from developing higher anxiety levels a year later; however using problem-focussed strategies did not. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Quality of life (QoL) is becoming an increasingly used outcome measure in both clinical practice and research but little is known about QoL in dementia and how it may change over time. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 60 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
53/100
Our study confirms and extends findings from other countries, demonstrating cross-sectional associations between moderate and poor self-rated vision and dementia in England in all participants aged 50 and older and longitudinally over an 11-year period in those aged 50 to 69. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
51/100
This study illustrates the need to identify these individuals and to make provisions among social service agencies to monitor their well-being regularly and provide a higher level of support when needs are identified. 3 key findings →
Participants: 141,460 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The clinical symptoms of dementia include difficulty with speech, poor short-term memory, and changes in behavior. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
There was no significant difference between patients with dementia or depression in their wish to know their diagnosis. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
The QoL-AD could be used as an effective measure of the quality of life of people with dementia in residential homes. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
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 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 →