Get help now — free helplines

You can call any of these for free. You do not need a diagnosis, an appointment, or a crisis to call — questions and plain exhaustion are reasons enough.

  • Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline 800-272-3900 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Free, confidential support and information for people with dementia, caregivers, families and the public. Master's-level clinicians. Also Spanish.
  • 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 988 24/7 Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. For anyone in emotional distress or a mental-health crisis, including caregivers.
  • Alzheimer's Foundation of America (AFA) Helpline 866-232-8484 9:00 am - 9:00 pm ET, seven days a week Licensed social workers providing support, info and referrals. Also text message and web chat. Text: 646-586-5283

In a medical emergency, call 911. More numbers, and what each line does, on the help page.

Find studies

A note on reading research. One study is rarely the final word.

We try to note the size of a study, whether it was in humans or animals, and how early-stage the finding is. If a summary here doesn't make that clear, treat it with extra caution and check the original source.

Importantly, delirium is not merely a transient cognitive fluctuation; it is independently associated with increased short- and long-term mortality, longer hospital stays, higher healthcare costs, and persistent cognitive impairment comparable to mild dementia[4,5]. 5 key findings →

Evidence: low

Sundowning Syndrome (SS) is a clinically observed phenomenon, primarily associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), characterized by the exacerbation of neuropsychiatric symptoms during the late afternoon or evening, or in conditions of reduced ambient illumination. 3 key findings →

Design: case report Evidence: low

Calculating cognitive decline in delirium

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 30 out of 100. Age and Ageing 2014-06-22

The 101 CADIS patients demonstrated several new findings: (i) the mean delay between symptom onset and admission was 1.4 days; (ii) for daily attention tests, 5-digit span forward improved to baseline in a mean of 1.3 days, whereas 6-digit span improved in a mean of 5.7 days; (iii) Delirium index, a 7-question instrument for monitoring delirium [2–3] improved to baseline in a mean of 5.8 days. 1 key finding →

Evidence: high

The study highlights the significant role FCPs play in DSD care and the urgent need for interventions that address their educational and emotional needs to improve patient and caregiver well-being. [ Research in Gerontological Nursing, 18 (3), 113–123.] 2 key findings →

Evidence: low

Acute ischemic stroke often results in a multitude of neuropsychiatric complications, including depression, dementia, delirium, and fatigue. 3 key findings →

Evidence: low

Delirium in the Nursing Home Setting

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 24 out of 100. Psychiatry in Long-Term Care 2009-03-06

Although extensively studied in the acute care setting, the syndrome of delirium— also referred to as acute confusion—has been a subject of relatively few studies in the long-term care (LTC) setting. 1 key finding →

Evidence: low

Plasma Neurofilament Light Chain is Markedly Elevated in General Hospital Inpatients with Delirium

⚠ Preprint — not yet peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 16 out of 100. medRxiv 2026-10-20

In Phase 1 (n =176), inpatients with delirium showed higher concentrations of both NfL and GFAP than patients with dementia (β = 0.78; 95% CI [0.37, 1.20] and β = 0.39 [0.07, 0.73] respectively) or PPD groups (β = 1.17; [0.69, 1.66] and β = 0.83 [0.51, 1.24] respectively). 5 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 176 Evidence: moderate

The current study investigated several factors that might increase the risk of mortality in elderly patients with hip fracture. 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 223,875 Evidence: high

The results of this meta-analysis demonstrate that cognitive impairment and delirium are major issues in CABG patients which require specific attention. 2 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 91,829 Evidence: high

Overall, mental and neurological disorders were associated with a significant high risk of infection (pre-existing mental: OR 1·67, 95% CI 1·12-2·49; and pre-existing neurological: 2·05, 1·58-2·67), illness severity (mental: pre-existing, 1·40, 1·25-1·57; sequelae, 4·85, 2·53-9·32; neurological: pre-existing, 1·43, 1·09-1·88; sequelae, 2·17, 1·45-3·24), and mortality (mental: pre-existing, 1·47, 1·26-1·72; neurological: pre-existing, 2·08, 1·61-2·69; sequelae, 2·03, 1·66-2·49) from COVID-19. 5 key findings →

Design: systematic review Participants: 149 Evidence: high

Early identification and management of OD should consider geriatric syndromes and neurogenic comorbidities to prevent malnutrition and pneumonia and reduce mortality in adults aged 60 years and older. 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 31,488 Evidence: high

Thinning of retinal layers, measured using optical coherence tomography (OCT), is associated with some neurodegenerative disorders such as established Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. 5 key findings →

Design: systematic review Participants: 622 Evidence: high

Age and frailty are independently associated with adverse outcomes in COVID-19. 5 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 5,711 Evidence: moderate

Compared with respective matched nonusers, individuals receiving haloperidol had an increased mortality risk of 3.8% (95% CI, 1.0%-6.6%; P Conclusions and relevance The absolute effect of antipsychotics on mortality in elderly patients with dementia may be higher than previously reported and increases with dose. 5 key findings →

Design: case-control study Participants: 90,786 Evidence: moderate

A deep learning algorithm based on patient demographic information and longitudinal clinical notes appeared to show promising results in predicting mortality among patients with dementia in different time frames. 3 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 26 Evidence: moderate

Antipsychotic initiation and use were common during hospitalization, most often for delirium, and individuals were frequently discharged on these medications. 3 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 17,775 Evidence: moderate

SEE MCKAY AND FURL DOI101093/AWW323 FOR A SCIENTIFIC COMMENTARY ON THIS ARTICLE: Focal brain injury can sometimes lead to bizarre symptoms, such as the delusion that a family member has been replaced by an imposter (Capgras syndrome). 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high

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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 →

Newest studies, as a dated timeline →    Atom feed