27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
In this population-based longitudinal study, carotid IMT was associated with a higher risk of developing cognitive impairment during the 10-year follow-up, and was associated with poorer performance in a test of executive function 10 years later. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 1,651 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In cognitively unimpaired adults with increased risk for AD, increased exposure to air pollution was suggested to be associated with greater global atrophy and reduced volume and thickness in specific brain areas known to be affected in AD, thus suggesting a potential link between environmental exposures and cerebral vulnerability to AD. 4 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort Participants: 958 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
To explore the nature of the olfactory dysfunction associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), 81 PD patients who scored well on a cognitive screening test were administered the 40-odorant University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test; 38 were additionally given a forced-choice phenylethyl alcohol odor detection threshold test. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 24 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Even in persons who are currently nondisabled, a simple measure of lower extremity performance is predictive of subsequent hospitalization, especially for geriatric conditions. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 3,381 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
This study provides a comprehensive estimate of the excess costs that result from providing informal dementia care in the community. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 2,043 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Underclassification of dementia from claims records can be partially remedied by increasing the period during which claims are compiled, but additional diagnostic sources will likely be needed to increase prevalence counts closer to 100% of true cases. 2 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort Participants: 4,166 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The associations with vascular dementia may be one component of a broader association between autoimmune diseases and vascular damage. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 827 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
A cognitive symptom measure identified in discharge notes facilitated stratification of risk for dementia up to 8 years before diagnosis. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Therefore, respective software was developed in-house.8,9 Segmentation results are then analysed for potential associations with disease risks and to establish reference intervals of organ size and function.10 SHIP is also used as a basis for meta-research with a particular focus on incidental MRI findings and their effects on study participants.11,12 With its large amount of standardized data and the option to internally replicate findings from SHIP-START using data of the independent SHIP-TREND, the project offers good opportunities to apply new bioinformatical tools to mine the data and gain new insights into risk factors and pathomechanisms. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The study has been harmonized with leading international research so as to ensure adoption of best practice and comparability of results. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 25 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Current knowledge of cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD) has largely been obtained from studies of chronically treated patients in whom effects of disease chronicity, treatment, depression and dementia are confounding factors. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 60 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Growing evidence has linked long-term fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) exposure to neurological disorders. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Analyzing postmortem brain pathology from over 3,200 people plus biomarker data from more than 10,000 more, researchers found that people who inherit two copies of the APOE4 gene variant (about 2-3% of the population) develop Alzheimer's brain changes almost universally and on a predictable timeline starting around age 55, much like known single-gene forms of Alzheimer's. The authors argue this makes APOE4 homozygosity itself a genetic form of Alzheimer's disease rather than just a risk factor. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
This Dutch cohort study compared dementia rates in two groups of older adults enrolled ten years apart. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 7,496 Evidence: preliminary
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
A simple blood test for GFAP, a protein released by activated star-shaped brain support cells called astrocytes, could identify which patients with mild memory problems had underlying Alzheimer's pathology and predict, years in advance, who would go on to develop Alzheimer's dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 160 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The use of conventional anti-dementia drugs is associated with a lower mortality in nursing home residents with dementia and should be widely used in this population. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 25,358 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Individuals with cannabis use severe enough to require hospital-based care were at increased risk of a new dementia diagnosis compared with those with all-cause hospital-based care or the general population. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 6,086,794 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The overall age and sex standardized incidence decreased between 2015 and 2021 from 3.5% to 2.8%. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Given the inconsistent evidence regarding hearing aid use and reduced dementia risk, this study evaluates whether hearing aid use, particularly effective use, is associated with lower probable dementia risk among hearing-impaired older adults. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 61,089 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
A polygenic score (PGS) for Alzheimer's disease (AD) was derived recently from data on genome-wide significant loci in European ancestry populations. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Memory declined in APOE e4 carriers before the symptomatic presentation of MCI in a cohort whose mean age was 60 years over a median period of 33 months. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 212 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
In this longitudinal study, impaired acute insulin response at midlife was associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer disease (AD) up to 35 years later suggesting a causal link between insulin metabolism and the pathogenesis of AD. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 2,322 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Carriers of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) epsilon4 allele show significantly higher risk of Alzheimer disease (AD). 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 195 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
To evaluate reverse causation, we assessed whether a polygenic risk score for AD is associated with HGS. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
During 21 046 person-years of follow-up (median follow-up, 6.3 years), 199 women developed dementia, including 159 who developed AD. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 3,601 Evidence: moderate
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 →