Evidence from well-planned, representative epidemiological surveys is scarce in many regions. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Research
27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Sleep disturbances and dementia are two common and significant health problems in older adults. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 246,786 Evidence: high
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Of 5,588 records identified, we included 123 studies involving 35,513 participants from 32 countries. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 123 Evidence: moderate
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After multivariable adjustment, patients showed an odds ratio (OR) 1·61 (95% CI 0·80-3·25) for scale 4 versus scale 3 and 4·60 (1·85-11·48) for scale 5-6 versus scale 3 for diffusion impairment; OR 0·88 (0·66-1·17) for scale 4 versus scale 3 and OR 1·77 (1·05-2·97) for scale 5-6 versus scale 3 for anxiety or depression, and OR 0·74 (0·58-0·96) for scale 4 versus scale 3 and 2·69 (1·46-4·96) for scale 5-6 versus scale 3 for fatigue or muscle weakness. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 94 Evidence: moderate
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12,887 participants were interviewed at baseline. 11,718 were free of dementia, of whom 8137 (69%) were reinterviewed, contributing 34,718 person-years of follow-up. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 12,887 Evidence: moderate
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Variation in service use among sites was most plausibly accounted for by stark differences in the extent of out-of-pocket expenses, and the ability of older people and their families to afford them. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 17,944 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
When zero inflation was taken into account, between-site differences in disability scores were largely attributable to compositional differences in health and sociodemographic characteristics. 5 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 15 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The 10/66 DRG baseline population-based studies are nearly complete. 5 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
68/100
The prevalence of DSM-IV dementia varied widely, from 0.3% (95% CI 0.1-0.5) in rural India to 6.3% (5.0-7.7) in Cuba. 2 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 14 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We aimed to inform planning by assessing intrinsic capacity prevalence, by characterising the target group, and by validating the general approach-testing hypotheses that DIC was consistently associated with higher risks of incident dependence and death. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 17,031 Evidence: moderate
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No significant association was found between MHT use and risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 1,016,055 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
An algorithm-derived diagnosis of aMCI showed few sociodemographic associations but was consistently associated with higher disability and neuropsychiatric symptoms in addition to showing substantial variation in prevalence across LAMIC populations. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 15,376 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Epidemiological evidence regarding the association between atrial fibrillation (AF) onset age and risk of incident dementia remains unexplored. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 746 Evidence: moderate
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Apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 is the single most important genetic risk factor for cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease (AD), while lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking, diet, and physical activity also have impact on cognition. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
We found no evidence to support the theory that natural variation in cumulative exposure to endogenous oestrogens across the reproductive period influences dementia incidence in late life. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Metformin might correlate with a lower dementia incidence in people with T2DM. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 3,463,100 Evidence: early
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The demographic and health transitions will lead to large and rapid increases in the numbers of dependent older people particularly in middle income countries (MIC). 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (sTREM2) is a potential and novel biomarker of neuroinflammation implicated in the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 82 Evidence: high
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Extensive evidence shows the beneficial effect of adhering to a regular physical activity (PA) pattern on brain health. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 75,629 Evidence: moderate
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However, not all plant-based foods are necessarily beneficial for dementia or depression. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 180,532 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Distinct associations between different traffic noise exposures and incident dementia subtypes were found in this large UK prospective cohort study. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 502,416 Evidence: moderate
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This study included 887 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 887 Evidence: moderate
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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
At the First WHO Ministerial Conference on Global Action Against Dementia in March, 2015, 160 delegates, including representatives from 80 WHO Member States and four UN agencies, agreed on a call for action to reduce the global burden of dementia by fostering a collective effort to advance research. 5 key findings →
Participants: 201 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Worldwide costs of dementia are enormous and still inequitably distributed. 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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 →