We found a sequence to pathological changes, with rates of Aβ deposition in mutation carriers being significantly different from those in non-carriers first (across regions that showed a significant difference, at a mean of 18·9 years [SD 3·3] before expected onset), followed by hypometabolism (14·1 years [5·1] before expected onset), and lastly structural decline (4·7 years [4·2] before expected onset). 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 346
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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77/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 77 out of 100.
·
JAMA neurology
·
2021-04-01
These results suggest that flortaucipir PET scans, when interpreted with an US Food and Drug Administration-approved, clinically applicable visual interpretation method, may provide valuable information regarding the risk of clinical deterioration over 18 months among patients with AD and MCI. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 174
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
·
JAMA
·
2025-06-16
Among the 6514 participants (mean age, 69.5 years; 50.5% female), median follow-up time ranged from 1.5 to 4.0 years. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 6,514
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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Noninvasive biomarkers of early neuronal injury may help identify cognitively normal individuals at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 196
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
These outcomes illustrate the potential benefits of rasagiline on clinical and neuroimaging measures in patients with mild to moderate AD. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 50
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
·
JAMA neurology
·
2023-07-01
The study team reported a significant change in diagnoses and patient medication when tau PET was added to an already extensive diagnostic workup that included cerebrospinal fluid AD biomarkers. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 878
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
73/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100.
·
PLoS medicine
·
2018-01-25
We found that distinct sphingolipid species including sphingomyelin (SM) with acyl residue sums C16:0, C18:1, and C16:1 (SM C16:0, SM C18:1, SM C16:1) and hydroxysphingomyelin with acyl residue sum C14:1 (SM (OH) C14:1) were consistently associated with severity of AD pathology at autopsy and AD progression across prodromal and preclinical stages. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 44
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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73/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100.
·
JAMA
·
2017-06-01
Among the 445 participants (243 with normal amyloid, 202 with elevated amyloid), mean (SD) age was 74.0 (5.9) years, mean education was 16.4 (2.7) years, and 52% were women. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 243
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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73/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100.
·
Neurology
·
2018-07-27
Neuroinflammation and cerebrovascular dysfunction are early events occurring already at presymptomatic stages of AD and contribute to disease progression. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 508
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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One hundred twenty-eight participants (21.9%) developed dementia over a median of 7.1 years. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 584
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) is a longitudinal multisite observational study of healthy elders, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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Within each Braak stage, however, the pattern of abnormality demonstrated significant heterogeneity such that the overlap of abnormal regions across participants averaged less than 50%, particularly in persons with mild cognitive impairment. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 832
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
To validate our in vivo results, we examined 1610 autopsy cases from an Arizona-based neuropathology cohort on three main vascular pathological features: cerebral amyloid angiopathy; white matter rarefaction; and infarcts. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 677
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
These findings revealed the dynamic changes of microstructural and macrostructural indicators and their associations with AD and SNAP, providing novel insights into understanding upstream and downstream events of cMD in neurodegenerative disease. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 617
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
71/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 71 out of 100.
·
JAMA
·
2003-03-01
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
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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Although studies in animal models suggest that TREM2 is protective against Alzheimer's pathology, its effect on tau pathology and its potential beneficial role in people with Alzheimer's disease is still unclear. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 155
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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71/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 71 out of 100.
·
Nature medicine
·
2021-04-29
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by the spread of tau pathology throughout the cerebral cortex. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 1,612
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
We found that the cognitively unimpaired amyloid-β-negative individuals had significant longitudinal tau accumulation confined to the PET Braak-like stage I (3.9%) and II (2.8%) areas. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 125
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
Addition of CAT to the PACC provides unique information about early cognitive decline not currently captured by the episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition components and may therefore improve detection of early Aβ-related cognitive decline. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 70
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The best-performing MRI-free approaches had high continuous and dichotomous agreement with MRI-dependent SUVRs for Aβ PET and temporal flortaucipir (R2 ≥0.95; ± agreement ≥92%) and for Alzheimer's disease-related effect sizes; agreement was slightly lower for entorhinal flortaucipir and longitudinal slopes. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 1,290
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
There were 571 participants in the normal cognition group, 625 participants in the subjective cognitive decline group, 155 participants in the objectively defined subtle cognitive decline group, 501 participants in the mild cognitive impairment group, 471 participants in Alzheimer's disease group, and 128 participants with cognitive impairment from other known causes. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 4,386
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
In Alzheimer's disease (AD), younger symptom onset is associated with accelerated disease progression and tau spreading, yet the mechanisms underlying faster disease manifestation are unknown. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 240
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
71/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 71 out of 100.
·
JAMA neurology
·
2021-02-01
Substantial flortaucipir accumulation in temporal regions is greatest in persons aged 65 to 85 years who were CU and had high initial Aβ PET levels, compared with those with lower Aβ levels. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 167
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid-beta (Aβ) triggers the trans-synaptic spread of tau pathology, and aberrant synaptic activity has been shown to promote tau spreading. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 93
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
The apolipoprotein E gene ( APOE ) is the most important genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer disease, with the ε4 allele being associated with increased cerebral amyloid-β and tau pathologies. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 277
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies →
Original source
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 30,980 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.