A history of depression may confer an increased risk for later developing AD. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis 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.
Higher adherence to the MeDi was associated with lower risk for AD (odds ratio, 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.67-0.87; P<.001). 5 key findings →
Design: case-control study Participants: 194 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
51/100
Voluntary physical activity and exercise training can favorably influence brain plasticity by facilitating neurogenerative, neuroadaptive, and neuroprotective processes. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
51/100
Vascular risk factors for Alzheimer disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) have been evaluated; however, few studies have compared risks by dementia subtypes and sex. 1 key finding →
Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is characterised by loss of muscular atonia and prominent motor behaviours during REM sleep. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Low levels of BDNF accompany impaired glucose metabolism. 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
This is the first demonstration of gender differences in brain ferritin iron levels. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
The clinical, laboratory, and radiologic findings associated with SREAT are more varied than previously reported. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
CNS Vital Signs (CNSVS) is a computerized neurocognitive test battery that was developed as a routine clinical screening instrument. 1 key finding →
Participants: 1,069 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Mild to moderate hyperhomocysteinemia is a risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The majority of respondents were geriatric psychiatrists (58%). 2 key findings →
Participants: 334 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with major impairments in insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) gene expression and signaling in the brain. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
The National Adult Reading Test (NART) is widely used as a measure of premorbid IQ of the English-speaking patients with dementia. 1 key finding →
Participants: 50 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Astaxanthin (1), a red-orange carotenoid pigment, is a powerful biological antioxidant that occurs naturally in a wide variety of living organisms. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
The incidence and prevalence of dementia are increasing. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Cockayne syndrome and xeroderma pigmentosum-Cockayne syndrome complex are rare autosomal recessive disorders with poorly understood biology. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
From earliest times, psychiatrists have described biological rhythm disturbances as characteristic of mood disorders. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Epidemiologic evidence suggests that individuals with higher IQ, education, occupational attainment, or participation in leisure activities have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD). 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Major depressive disorder is a potentially debilitating condition that often is unrecognized or undertreated in the elderly. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
36/100
Acetylcholine is widely distributed in the nervous system and has been implicated to play a critical role in cerebral cortical development, cortical activity, controlling cerebral blood flow and sleep-wake cycle as well as in modulating cognitive performances and learning and memory processes. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
36/100
Sleep has important homeostatic functions, and sleep deprivation is a stressor that has consequences for the brain, as well as many body systems. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS, e.g. nitric oxide, NO(*)) are well recognised for playing a dual role as both deleterious and beneficial species. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Cytokine-induced sickness behavior was recognized within a few years of the cloning and expression of interferon-alpha, IL-1 and IL-2, which occurred around the time that the first issue of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity was published in 1987. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
36/100
The brain is critically dependent on a continuous supply of blood to function. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The formation of well-ordered fibrillar protein deposits is common to a large group of amyloid-associated disorders. 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 →