Each study has a usefulness score out of 100 (rubric version 4.0). Tap a score to see what makes it up.
Download bibliography of all 5,209 studies, highest score first: BibTeX (.bib) · RIS (.ris)
Highest usefulness score first. Studies without a score come last.
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Elevated LDL-C levels were associated with higher probability of having EOAD, and EOAD cases were enriched for rare coding variants in APOB, which codes for the major protein of LDL-C.
Why it matters
In a genetic study of 2,125 samples, elevated LDL cholesterol levels were associated with higher probability of having early-onset Alzheimer's disease, and early-onset cases were enriched for rare coding variants in APOB. This suggests a link between cholesterol metabolism and early-onset Alzheimer's, but no treatment or prevention is tested.
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51/100
The present study investigated the ability of the Multilingual Naming Test (MINT), a picture naming test recently added to the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center's (NACC) Uniform Data Set neuropsychological test battery, to detect naming impairment (i.e., dysnomia) across stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Why it matters
The MINT picture naming test detected naming impairment across stages of Alzheimer's disease in a large sample of participants. This is a cross-sectional study, so it shows the test can measure naming problems at a single point in time, not that it changes treatment, cure, or prevention.
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Alzheimer disease (AD) represents an oncoming epidemic that without an effective treatment promises to exact extraordinary human and financial burdens.
Why it matters
This review discusses evidence that toxic clumps of amyloid beta and tau proteins may spread through brain circuits and drive Alzheimer's disease, including in people with Down syndrome. It notes many unanswered questions and offers a speculative synthesis rather than a proven treatment or cure.
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Cognitive decline in preclinical AD finds tauopathy has a more impact than Aβ-42.
Why it matters
Fifteen animal studies were reviewed and all reported that PDE-5 inhibitors prevented memory problems in Alzheimer's models, possibly by lowering p-Tau and raising CREB and BDNF rather than through Aβ-42. However, the authors say the efficacy remains unclear because of the small number of studies, high risk of bias and low reporting quality. These are animal findings, so they point to a drug class worth studying rather than a proven prevention for people.
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51/100
Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia refers to a particular onset and course of cognitive and functional decline associated with age together with a particular neuropathology.
Why it matters
This 2019 handbook review explains what Alzheimer's dementia is: a decline in thinking and daily function that usually begins with trouble forming new memories, linked to amyloid and tau changes in the brain that the authors describe alongside metabolic, vascular, inflammatory and other co-occurring brain changes. It notes the disease falls disproportionately on minority populations in the United States, and that treatment available then gave only a "modest, clinically measurable effect" on cognition. It is a background overview and does not test any treatment, cure or prevention.
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Our nation is becoming increasingly diverse; however, few autopsy studies examine multiple ethnoracial groups, especially Hispanics.
Why it matters
Among people with dementia who had autopsies, Hispanics were much more likely than expected to have cerebrovascular disease contributing to their dementia, and less likely to have Alzheimer's disease alone. This means that for Hispanic patients, blood vessel damage in the brain may be a more common cause of dementia than Alzheimer's disease by itself.
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Disturbances along the brain-gut-microbiota axis may significantly contribute to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders.
Why it matters
This review proposes that changes in gut bacteria may drive inflammation that harms the brain and contributes to Alzheimer's disease. It describes a possible mechanism only and reports no treatment, cure or prevention that has been tested in people.
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Our results indicate that assessing regional changes in amyloid, particularly in posterior cortical regions, can aid in the early detection of subclinical amyloid-related decline in episodic memory as early as middle age.
Why it matters
In 126 initially amyloid-negative cognitively normal adults, increasing amyloid accumulation in posterior cortical regions was associated with declining episodic memory over four years. This suggests that assessing regional amyloid changes may aid in early detection of subclinical memory decline, but no treatment is tested.
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Plasma amyloid-β (Aβ) levels are increasingly studied as a potential accessible marker of cognitive impairment and dementia.
Why it matters
This population-based study investigated whether blood levels of amyloid-beta peptides relate to brain shrinkage and the risk of dementia. It does not show that measuring or changing these blood levels prevents or treats Alzheimer's disease.
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Digital technology is transforming the development of drugs for Alzheimer's disease and was the topic of the Alzheimer's Association's Research Roundtable on its May 23-24, 2017 meeting.
Why it matters
This meeting report discusses how wearable devices and passive sensors may capture subtle changes in cognition and functional capacity before dementia onset and could serve as recruitment, retention, and endpoint tools in clinical trials. It reports no treatment, cure, or prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
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Simultaneously evaluating resting-state brain glucose metabolism and intrinsic functional activity has potential to impact the clinical neurosciences of Alzheimer Disease (AD).
Why it matters
In 23 patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease, the coupling between brain glucose use and functional brain activity was reduced compared with healthy older adults. This is a small imaging study describing a brain change and does not test any treatment or show that restoring this coupling helps patients.
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51/100
The ability of Alzheimer's disease (AD) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers (amyloid β peptide 1-42, total tau, and phosphorylated tau) to discriminate AD from related disorders is limited.
Why it matters
Adding cerebrospinal fluid α-synuclein to standard Alzheimer biomarkers improved the ability to tell Alzheimer's disease apart from related disorders in 367 participants, with validation in 74 neuropathologically confirmed cases. This is a diagnostic study and does not address treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Data from 2,133 participants with autopsy-confirmed AD (i.e., at least Braak neurofibrillary tangle stages III to VI and CERAD neuritic plaque score moderate to frequent) were obtained from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC).
Why it matters
In 2,133 people whose Alzheimer's disease was confirmed at autopsy (NACC data), the 194 who reported a past head injury with loss of consciousness had symptoms start on average 2.34 years earlier than the 1,900 who did not (p = .01), after adjusting for sex, education and race. The head injuries were self-reported and onset ages were estimated by clinicians. Everyone studied already had Alzheimer's, so this links head injury to *earlier* onset, not to *getting* the disease, and it does not show that preventing head injuries prevents or delays Alzheimer's.
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Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder and the most common type of dementia (60-80% of cases).
Why it matters
This review links tau, neuroinflammation and Alzheimer's disease and notes how many people are affected. It summarizes existing knowledge rather than testing a treatment, so it does not show that any therapy works.
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major neurodegenerative disease and the most common cause of dementia.
Why it matters
This review describes how multimodality imaging combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence may help diagnose and predict progression of Alzheimer's disease at mild cognitive impairment or preclinical stages. It concerns diagnostic and prognostic methods and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) was developed in the 1980s to assess the level of cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matters
This narrative review discusses concerns about whether the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale can detect important changes in pre-dementia populations. It is about a measurement scale used in trials, not a treatment, cure, or prevention study.
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51/100
Dysbiosis of intestinal microbiota in the elderly can cause a leaky gut, which may result in silent systemic inflammation and promote neuroinflammation - a relevant pathomechanism in the early course of Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matters
This small study of twenty outpatients with Alzheimer's disease investigated whether probiotic supplementation could affect gut inflammation and immune activation markers. It is an exploratory intervention study with a very small sample, so it cannot yet show whether probiotics help treat or prevent Alzheimer's disease.
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Over the past decade, a surge of evidence has documented various pathological processes in the retina of patients suffering from mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Why it matters
This review reports that the retina is profoundly affected in Alzheimer's disease, showing amyloid β-protein plaques, ganglion cell degeneration, and thinning of the retinal nerve fiber layer. It describes optical coherence tomography as a tool that can noninvasively detect and monitor these retinal signs in living patients, but no treatment or prevention is tested.
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This pilot trial justifies KD studies in mild Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matters
In this small pilot trial, ten participants with Alzheimer's disease who completed a ketogenic diet achieved ketosis and their average cognitive score improved during the diet, then returned to baseline after the diet stopped. The authors say this early trial justifies further ketogenic diet studies in mild Alzheimer's disease, but the small number of participants means the results are preliminary.
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People with Down syndrome (DS) are at high risk for developing Alzheimer disease (AD) with age.
Why it matters
Comparing post mortem brain tissue, this study found cerebral amyloid angiopathy was significantly more frequent in people with Down syndrome than in sporadic Alzheimer's disease or controls, while atherosclerosis and arteriolosclerosis were rare in Down syndrome. The authors suggest cerebral amyloid angiopathy in Down syndrome may be a target for future clinical trials, but no intervention was tested.
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Goal 1 of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease is to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer disease and Alzheimer disease-related dementias by 2025.
Why it matters
This article summarizes the 2016 Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias Summit and its research priorities. It does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Atrophy rates are pathologically increased up to seven years before "expected onset".
Why it matters
In people who carry genes causing early-onset Alzheimer's, brain shrinkage speeds up years before expected symptoms appear. Measuring these shrinkage rates may help select and track participants in trials that aim to treat the disease before symptoms start.
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We performed whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing in 927 late-onset Alzheimer disease (LOAD) cases, 852 early-onset AD (EOAD) cases, and 1273 controls from France.
Why it matters
This sequencing study found that rare damaging variants in SORL1, TREM2 and ABCA7 are each linked to early-onset Alzheimer's disease risk, though each explains only a small share of heritability compared with APOE epsilon 4. No significant signal was found for late-onset Alzheimer's disease in this sample.
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The conventional Clock Drawing Test (cCDT) is a rapid and inexpensive screening tool for detection of moderate and severe dementia.
Why it matters
A digital version of the Clock Drawing Test measured the time the pen was in the air and distinguished people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment from healthy controls with 81.3% sensitivity and 72.2% specificity, compared with 62.5% and 83.3% for the conventional test. This is a small study of 70 people and concerns diagnosis only, not treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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High-dose DHA supplementation in APOE4 carriers before the onset of AD dementia can be a promising approach to decrease the incidence of AD.
Why it matters
This review notes that randomized clinical trials of omega-3 in symptomatic Alzheimer's disease had negative findings, while some observational and clinical trials in the predementia stage suggest omega-3 supplementation may slow early memory decline in APOE4 carriers. It proposes that early supplementation might reduce risk, but this remains an untested possibility rather than an established treatment, cure, or prevention.
From across this topic
10 of the 5,172 studies in this topic, picked by a fixed rule (a hash of each study's address), not by score or date; each page of this list shows a different 10. The same 10 appear here every time.
- Plasma tau in Alzheimer disease
- Alzheimer's disease drug development pipeline: 2018
- Red blood cell ω-3 status and longitudinal cognition in individuals at risk of Alzheimer disease
- An explainable machine learning approach for Alzheimer's disease classification
- A randomized, controlled clinical trial of plasma exchange with albumin replacement for Alzheimer's disease: Primary results of the AMBAR Study
- The ATENción Plena en Enfermedad de Alzheimer (ATENEA-Mindfulness in Alzheimer's Disease) Program for Caregivers: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
- Alzheimer Combination Therapies: Overview and Scenarios
- Towards a better diagnosis and treatment of dementia: Identifying common and distinct neuropathological mechanisms in Alzheimer's and vascular dementia
- Volume of the posterior and not anterior hippocampus predicts spatial memory performance in Alzheimer´s Disease
- Investigating White Matter Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer Disease Using Diffusion-Based Neuroinflammation Imaging