27,780 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
This study will provide clinically relevant data on the likelihood and time to relapse, and predictors of relapse, in patients switched from risperidone to placebo after response to risperidone treatment. 2 key findings →
Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
In our dataset search, we identified 108 910 people with a record indicating dementia at any time. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 9,819 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Variation in use of APMs in U.S. nursing homes based upon facility characteristics exemplifies the need for a more systematic protocol guiding the use of these medications, along with heightened regulatory policies and enforcement. 2 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Older adults with dementia who take atypical antipsychotics have a similar risk of ischaemic stroke to those taking typical antipsychotics. 1 key finding →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Nursing homes underreport their antipsychotic prescribing levels, on average, by 1 percentage point per quarter relative to Medicare Part D claims (0.013, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.012-0.015; p<.001). 5 key findings →
Participants: 586,281 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Guidelines recommend limiting antipsychotic treatment to short-term use ( Methods Using UK primary care data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, linked with hospital and mortality data from Jan 1, 1998, to March 31, 2021, we emulated two sets of target trials, one after 12 weeks of antipsychotic treatment and another after 24 weeks of antipsychotic treatment, to compare continuing treatment versus tapering treatment and continuing treatment versus abrupt discontinuation of treatment. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 24,822 Evidence: moderate
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In 1999, 17.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 17.2-18.1) of patients with dementia were using atypical or conventional antipsychotics. 3 key findings →
Participants: 254 Evidence: low
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Among nursing home residents with dementia, discontinuing long-term antipsychotic medication use was associated with lower risks of hospitalization, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections, suggesting clinical benefits in this population. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort Participants: 4,222 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Serious events, as indicated by a hospital admission or death, are frequent following the short-term use of antipsychotic drugs in older adults with dementia. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
Read the article, “Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia: How Long Does Every Behavior Last, and Are Particular Behaviors Associated With PRN Antipsychotic Agent Use?” found on pages 22–37, carefully noting any tables and other illustrative materials that are included to enhance your knowledge and understanding of the content. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In 2012, the national prevalence of antipsychotic drug use was 20.7% for elderly patients with dementia, with a national incidence of 3.9%. 4 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional Participants: 34,536 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
In FY2008, 50% of patients with PD having a diagnosis of psychosis were prescribed an AP. 5 key findings →
Participants: 2,597 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
memantine, cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI), antipsychotic use] estimated adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% CIs for resident, facility, and HRR characteristics. 5 key findings →
Participants: 9,735 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
In relation to placebo, the last observation in phase 1 showed greater improvement with olanzapine or risperidone on the Neuropsychiatric Inventory total score, risperidone on the Clinical Global Impression of Changes, olanzapine and risperidone on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) hostile suspiciousness factor, and risperidone on the BPRS psychosis factor. 5 key findings →
Design: clinical trial Participants: 421 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
This suggests that for many antipsychotic drug users benefits may be marginal and that programs to reduce such drug use among the 250,000 US nursing home residents receiving these drugs should have high priority. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
We aimed to explore diagnoses associated with antipsychotic use, treatment patterns and characteristics of users without diagnoses relevant to antipsychotic treatment. 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Major categories of reasons for use of antipsychotic medications in the 204 NH residents in the study sample were behavioral (n = 171), psychiatric (n = 159), emotional states (n = 105), and cognitive diagnoses or symptoms (n = 114). 5 key findings →
Participants: 171 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
All antipsychotics are associated with an increased risk of stroke, and the risk might be higher in patients receiving atypical antipsychotics than those receiving typical antipsychotics. 4 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The FDA advisory was associated with decreases in the use of atypical antipsychotics, especially among elderly patients with dementia. 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as agitation and delusions occur commonly in elderly patients with dementia and often cause significant distress. 3 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Of the 8688 individuals in the Medicare Advantage population with a dementia diagnosis, 1061 (12.2%) received an antipsychotic medication. 4 key findings →
Participants: 8,688 Evidence: low
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Although the warnings slowed the growth in the use of atypical antipsychotic drugs among patients with dementia, they did not reduce the overall prescription rate of these potentially dangerous drugs. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Author(s): Reus, Victor I; Fochtmann, Laura J; Eyler, A Evan; Hilty, Donald M; Horvitz-Lennon, Marcela; Jibson, Michael D; Lopez, Oscar L; Mahoney, Jane; Pasic, Jagoda; Tan, Zaldy S; Wills, Cheryl D; Rhoads, Richard; Yager, Joel 1 key finding →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
However, recent data suggest that the risk of adverse effects may offset the benefits of atypical agents in patients with dementia. 5 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
As persons age, their risk of developing late-life depression increases. 2 key findings →
Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
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 27,780 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 27,780 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (61.1% of the library) and OpenAlex (18.3%), 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.
1,034 records (3.7% 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 →