Rates of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are extremely heterogeneous. 1 key finding →
Design: case-control study Participants: 3,397 Evidence: moderate
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.
Amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) and phosphorylated tau (pTau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) reflect core features of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) more directly than clinical diagnosis. 2 key findings →
Participants: 8,074 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
After controlling for the baseline AES-C score, site, and comedication with donepezil or galantamine, the mean change in the AES-C score between the bupropion and placebo groups was not statistically significant (mean change, 2.22; 95% CI, -0.47 to 4.91; P = .11). 4 key findings →
Participants: 108 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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 Free full text
Coding variants in the triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) are associated with late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Periventricular white matter hyperintensities (WMH; PVWMH) and deep WMH (DWMH) are regional classifications of WMH and reflect proposed differences in cause. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 26,654 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
81 participants with probable Alzheimer's disease and 69 healthy controls were assessed. 1 key finding →
Design: clinical trial Participants: 81 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
TREM2 is a transmembrane receptor that is predominantly expressed by microglia in the central nervous system. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 1,027 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
MoCA was administered to 274 patients from 2 prospective hospital-based cohort studies in Germany (n = 125) and France (n = 149). 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 125 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
In Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyloid-β (Aβ) triggers the aggregation and spreading of tau pathology, which drives neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 609 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
This study included patients with clinical SCD and SCD-free, healthy control (HC) participants with available baseline CSF and/or longitudinal cognitive data from the observational DZNE Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia study. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 672 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
This study undertook a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Alzheimer's disease involving over 16,000 individuals. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The authors sought to identify new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer's disease through a staged association study and by testing suggestive loci reported by the Alzheimer's Disease Genetic Consortium in a companion paper. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is proposed as an indicator of transitional disease stage 2 in the Alzheimer's disease (AD) continuum. 2 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 457 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
In this longitudinal study, we included 396 cognitively normal to dementia subjects with 18 F-Florbetapir/ 18 F-Florbetaben-amyloid-PET, 18 F-Flortaucipir-tau-PET and ~ 2-year cognitive follow-up. 1 key finding →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 396 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The mean (SD) age was 73.9 (7.35) years among the 237 ADNI participants and 70.2 (9.7) years among the 130 Avid-A05 participants. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 237 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
An international working group from the Centres of Excellence in Neurodegeneration completed a structured process to develop definitions and imaging standards for markers and consequences of cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Genetic variants within the VCAN gene may play a role in the mechanisms underlying microstructural integrity of the white matter in the brain measured as FA and MD. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 8,448 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (i.e. ApoE4) is the strongest genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study Participants: 221 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Of 736 patients (245 [33%] female, mean age 68·0 years [SD 11·2], median admission National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) 3 [IQR 1-5]), 557 (76%) were followed up until death or the end of the study, and 706 (96%) contributed to the PSD analysis. 5 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort Participants: 736 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
Poststroke cognitive impairment and dementia (PSCID) is a major source of morbidity and mortality after stroke worldwide. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
These findings underscore the importance of blood pressure control in midlife to mitigate dementia risk. 5 key findings →
Participants: 229,976 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 →