At baseline, significantly higher Aβ burdens were noted in patients with AD (2·27, SD 0·43) and those with MCI (1·94, 0·64) than in healthy controls (1·38, 0·39). 1 key finding →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 200
Evidence: moderate
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The APOE ε4 allele remains the strongest genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer's disease and the APOE ε2 allele the strongest genetic protective factor after multiple large scale genome-wide association studies and genome-wide association meta-analyses. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
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The relation between diabetes and major types of dementia is controversial. 1 key finding →
Design: systematic review
Evidence: high
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Of 1018 study patients enrolled, 508 were randomly assigned to rivastigmine and 510 to placebo; 17.3% of patients on rivastigmine and 21.4% on placebo progressed to AD (hazard ratio 0.85 [95% CI 0.64-1.12]; p=0.225). 4 key findings →
Evidence: high
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We investigated the effects of renin-angiotensin system blockade on cognitive function in patients aged 55 years and older with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease or diabetes with end-organ damage in two clinical trials. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Participants: 620
Evidence: high
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We aimed to determine the effect of live attenuated herpes zoster vaccination on incident dementia diagnoses among people aged 70 years and older using a natural experiment in Ontario, Canada, and to triangulate these findings, using a second natural experiment in Ontario and a quasi-experimental approach that uses data from multiple Canadian provinces. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 232,124
Evidence: moderate
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In this prospective cohort study, we included adults aged 40 years or older with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia, based on cognitive test results and clinical assessments, consecutively recruited at two memory clinics in Sweden, as part of the Swedish BioFINDER-2 study. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 572
Evidence: high
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A mean value of 85.7% was achieved for overall diagnostic accuracy, 82.4% for positive predictive value, and 87.5% for negative predictive value. 2 key findings →
Participants: 94
Evidence: low
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15 care sites with 289 residents were randomly assigned. 2 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Evidence: high
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Plasma p-tau217 was the highest-performing biomarker for identifying biologically defined Alzheimer's disease, with pooled sensitivity of 88·1% (95% CI 86·7-89·5, moderate certainty of evidence), specificity of 88·7% (87·4-89·9, moderate certainty of evidence), area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 91·1% (88·9-92·4, moderate certainty of evidence), and diagnostic odds ratio of 50·7 (40·6-63·4). p-tau181 pooled sensitivity was 80·5% (78·4-82·4, low certainty of evidence), specificity was 76·4% (74·1-78·6, low certainty of evidence), AUROC was 81·5% (80·2-82·9, low certainty of evidence), and diagnostic odds ratio was 13·4 (11·4-16·7). p-tau205 pooled sensitivity was 76·6% (70·7-81·6, moderate certainty of evidence), specificity was 86·0% (78·6-91·2, moderate certainty of evidence), AUROC was 85·1% (80·7-89·6, moderate certainty of evidence), and diagnostic odds ratio was 20·2 (10·5-38·7). p-tau212 pooled sensitivity was 84·5% (75·5-90·6, moderate certainty of evidence), specificity was 87·3% (79·5-92·5, moderate certainty of evidence), AUROC was 90·3% (86·6-94·1, moderate certainty of evidence), and diagnostic odds ratio was 41·2 (22·0-77·3). p-tau231 pooled sensitivity was 75·2% (71·3-78·8, moderate certainty of evidence), specificity was 75·3% (71·2-78·9, moderate certainty of evidence), AUROC was 80·2 (77·6-82·7, moderate certainty of evidence), and diagnostic odds ratio was 9·3 (7·0-12·2). 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Evidence: high
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High and increasing blood pressure from early adulthood into midlife seems to be associated with increased WMHV and smaller brain volumes at 69-71 years of age. 5 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 5,362
Evidence: moderate
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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
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No significant differences were noted between the two treatments in patients with PDD (3·6 with memantine vs 3·8 with placebo, -0·1 [-0·6 to 0·3]; p=0·576) or in the total population (3·5 with memantine vs 3·8 with placebo, -0·3 [-0·7 to 0·1]; p=0·120). 4 key findings →
Participants: 199
Evidence: low
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Dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease dementia, jointly known as Lewy body dementia, are common neurodegenerative conditions. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Evidence: high
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Cholinergic deficits might contribute to vascular cognitive impairment. 4 key findings →
Participants: 86
Evidence: high
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81 participants with probable Alzheimer's disease and 69 healthy controls were assessed. 1 key finding →
Design: clinical trial
Participants: 81
Evidence: high
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Alzheimer's disease is one of the most heritable diseases in elderly people and the most common type of dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 926
Evidence: moderate
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The primary outcome was difference in the change in Neuropsychiatric Inventory apathy scores for oxytocin versus placebo periods in the per-protocol population after 6 weeks of treatment. 2 key findings →
Design: phase-2-trial
Participants: 94
Evidence: early
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Each level increase in the severity of atherosclerosis or arteriolosclerosis was associated with significantly higher odds of Alzheimer's disease dementia (odds ratio [OR] for atherosclerosis 1·33, 95% CI 1·11-1·58; OR for arteriolosclerosis 1·20, 1·04-1·40). 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 1,143
Evidence: moderate
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We aimed to investigate whether hippocampal TDP-43 is associated with increased rates of hippocampal atrophy. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 205
Evidence: moderate
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In multivariate analyses, baseline age, University of Pennsylvania Smell Inventory Test (UPSIT) scores, CSF amyloid - (Aβ 42 ) to t-tau ratio, and APOE status were associated with change in MoCA scores over time. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 390
Evidence: moderate
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These samples were graded on an ordinal scale and genotyped for variants associated with synucleinopathies. 2 key findings →
Participants: 213
Evidence: moderate
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Patients with the repeat expansion had significantly more co-morbid FTD than patients without the repeat (50%vs 12%), and a distinct pattern of non-motor cortex changes on high-resolution 3 T magnetic resonance structural neuroimaging. 3 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 49
Evidence: moderate
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The amyloid-beta peptide Abeta(42) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 4 key findings →
Participants: 69
Evidence: low
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Across the brain, people with Down syndrome had greater concentrations of tau for a given level of amyloid compared with people with autosomal-dominant Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 137
Evidence: moderate
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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 28,180 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.