Microglial cells represent the immune system of the mammalian brain and therefore are critically involved in various injuries and diseases.
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Research
27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Accumulating evidence suggests that neurodegeneration induced by pathogenic proteins depends on contributions from surrounding glia. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Microglia, one of three glial cell types in the central nervous system (CNS), play an important role as resident immunocompetent and phagocytic cells in the CNS in the event of injury and disease. 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Microglia are innate immune cells of myeloid origin that take up residence in the central nervous system (CNS) during embryogenesis. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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The human G-protein-coupled formyl peptide receptor-like 1 (FPRL1) and its mouse homologue mFPR2 mediate the chemotactic activity of a variety of polypeptides associated with inflammation and bacterial infection, including the 42-amino acid form of amyloid beta peptide (Abeta42), a pathogenic factor in Alzheimer disease. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Chemokines were originally described as chemotactic cytokines involved in leukocyte trafficking. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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The role of microglia recruited from bone marrow (BM) into the CNS during the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is poorly understood. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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We presently describe the full-length cloning and functional characterization of an HIV-1-inducible gene, astrocyte elevated gene (AEG)-1. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (statins) have been reported to reduce the risk of Alzheimer disease. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Recent studies suggest that excitotoxicity may contribute to neuronal damage in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Neuroinflammation has an established link with AIDS-related dementia but has not been investigated in the post-highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) era. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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Cerebral vascular amyloid beta-protein (Abeta) deposition, also known as cerebral amyloid angiopathy, is a common pathological feature of Alzheimer's disease. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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In most neurodegenerative disorders, including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson disease, and Alzheimer disease, a massive neuronal cell death occurs as a consequence of an uncontrolled inflammatory response, where activated astrocytes and microglia and their cytotoxic agents play a crucial pathological role. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
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The contribution of inflammation to the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and prion diseases is poorly understood. 1 key finding →
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 →