Each study has a usefulness score out of 100 (rubric version 4.0). Tap a score to see what makes it up.
Highest usefulness score first. Studies without a score come last.
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54/100
Since 1989, four Canadian Consensus Conferences on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia (CCCDTD) have provided evidence-based dementia guidelines for Canadian clinicians and researchers.
Why it matters
This report presents consensus recommendations from the 5th Canadian Consensus Conference on the diagnosis and treatment of dementia, covering topics such as diagnosis, biomarkers, risk reduction and non-pharmacological interventions. It is a guideline summary rather than a study testing a treatment or cure.
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54/100
Total monthly health care costs for individuals with ADRD are statistically greater (P<0.05) than controls beginning in the third month before diagnosis and remain significantly greater through the eighth month following diagnosis.
Why it matters
This study found that total health care costs are higher for people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias starting before diagnosis, driven mainly by nursing home costs. It does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The increasing number of older adults has seen a corresponding growth in those affected by neurovascular diseases, including stroke and dementia.
Why it matters
This review notes that randomised controlled trials testing high-intensity interval training on the brain are surprisingly limited, so no firm conclusions about dementia prevention can be drawn from it. It suggests HIIT may be a more time-efficient way to gain vascular benefits that could protect the brain, but this remains to be tested.
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It is broadly acknowledged that the onset of dementia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be modifiable by the management of risk factors.
Why it matters
This article reviews evidence linking depression with Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline and argues that depression should be a focus of dementia prevention, proposing that early treatment of depressive symptoms may affect disease course. It calls for clinical trials, so the potential benefit of treating depression for preventing dementia is not yet established.
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Eight thousand five hundred twenty-one articles were screened, and 75 articles were eligible to be included.
Why it matters
Reviewing 75 studies, this systematic review found that links between Lewy body dementia and variants in APOE, GBA and SNCA have been replicated, and its meta-analysis confirmed APOE-ε4 is associated with dementia with Lewy bodies. The authors say the genetics point to α-synuclein, amyloid and tau pathology among other processes, and call for larger genome-wide studies to find more genes.
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These results add to the body of evidence on the adverse impact of ambient air pollution on cognitive aging and brain health and provide new insights into the genetic and behavioral factors that may impact individual susceptibility.
Why it matters
This study found that higher long-term exposure to ambient air pollution was associated with more rapid cognitive decline, and that this association was more pronounced among carriers of the APOE-ε4 allele. It identifies air pollution as a possible risk factor but does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention.
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White matter hyperintensities (WMHs), mainly caused by cerebrovascular injury, may lead to cognitive impairment.
Why it matters
This longitudinal ADNI-2 study explored whether white matter hyperintensity volume is associated with decline across eight cognitive domains. It examines associations between a brain measure and cognition, not a treatment, cure or prevention.
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Identifying clinical measures that track disease in the earliest stages of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is important for clinical trials.
Why it matters
This study looked at whether a detailed test of executive function could track early disease in people with genetic mutations causing familial frontotemporal dementia. It is about a potential measure for clinical trials in FTLD, not Alzheimer's, and does not test a treatment or cure.
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Prospective studies reporting associations between cognitive performance and subsequent incident dementia have been subject to attrition bias.
Why it matters
This study looked at whether performance on brief cognitive tests predicts who will develop dementia three to eight years later, using data from a very large UK group. It also checked whether known risk factors explain those associations, which could inform how cognitive screening is used.
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The implementation represented radical innovation and required far more resources than the incremental changes anticipated by the participants.
Why it matters
This four-year case study of digital monitoring technology in nursing homes found implementation required far more resources than expected, with co-creation the main facilitator. It is about care technology implementation and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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By 2060, an estimated 48 million people (47% of all deaths globally) will die with serious health-related suffering, which represents an 87% increase from 26 million people in 2016. 83% of these deaths will occur in low-income and middle-income countries.
Why it matters
This study projects that serious health-related suffering requiring palliative care will rise substantially by 2060, with most deaths occurring in low-income and middle-income countries. It does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Older adults with cognitive decline are vulnerable to various health problems.
Why it matters
Among older adults with cognitive decline, younger age, current driving, and stronger social networks predicted more time spent out of home, but physical environmental factors like distance to stores did not. This is a secondary analysis of a trial and does not test any treatment or prevention for Alzheimer's.
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Current practice in dementia imaging is fairly homogeneous across Europe, in terms of image acquisition and image interpretation.
Why it matters
This European survey of 193 centres found that MRI was primarily used in 72% of centres and visual rating scales in 75%, while only 23% performed volumetric analysis. It describes current imaging practice for dementia evaluation and reports no treatment, cure, or prevention findings.
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Hypertension has emerged as a leading cause of age-related cognitive impairment.
Why it matters
This review states that hypertension is a leading cause of age-related cognitive impairment and has been linked to Alzheimer disease, and that midlife hypertension is a risk factor for late-life dementia. It notes that whether treatment of hypertension prevents cognitive impairment remains a critical open question.
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Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is an age-associated neurodegenerative disorder producing progressive cognitive decline that interferes with normal life and daily activities.
Why it matters
This 2019 review summarises how dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is understood: a progressive dementia in which aggregated α-synuclein builds up in the brain, as in Parkinson's disease. It notes that Parkinson-type movement problems are common in DLB but "not essential" for the diagnosis, and that where DLB ends and Parkinson's disease dementia begins is still debated. It is a background overview with no new patient data and no treatment results.
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Immigrant status may have complex effects on dementia risk.
Why it matters
This cross-sectional study found differences in dementia prevalence by race/ethnicity and immigrant status among Medicare beneficiaries, with U.S.-born non-Hispanic Black people having higher prevalence than several other groups. It describes patterns only and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention.
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We tested the hypotheses that higher levels of and persistence of midlife leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) are associated long-term with lower cognitive decline and less incident dementia.
Why it matters
In 10,705 participants followed for a median of 17.4 years, high leisure-time physical activity in midlife was associated with lower dementia incidence and less cognitive decline. It reports an association and does not prove that physical activity prevents dementia.
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Within the prospective population-based Rotterdam Study, we studied lifetime risk of dementia, stroke and parkinsonism between 1990 and 2016.
Why it matters
This Rotterdam Study quantified the lifetime risk of dementia, stroke, and parkinsonism in older adults and projected effects of hypothetical preventive strategies that delay disease. It estimates risk and prevention potential but does not test an actual treatment or cure.
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Most older individuals develop inflammageing, a condition characterized by elevated levels of blood inflammatory markers that carries high susceptibility to chronic morbidity, disability, frailty, and premature death.
Why it matters
This review describes inflammageing as a risk factor for several conditions including dementia, but states that whether modulating inflammation beneficially affects the clinical course of non-cardiovascular health problems is controversial. It does not establish that treating inflammation prevents or cures Alzheimer's disease.
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The present study showed the potential use of IY intervention in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
Why it matters
In this small controlled pilot study of 30 professional caregivers of older adults with Alzheimer's disease, an integrated yoga program improved stress, depression, anxiety, and sleep quality after one month. This concerns caregiver well-being, not the treatment, cure, or prevention of Alzheimer's disease itself.
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The interplay between midlife vascular risk factors and midlife cognitive function with later life mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia (DEM) is not well understood.
Why it matters
In the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, midlife diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and hypercholesterolemia were associated with later-life mild cognitive impairment and dementia. This identifies midlife vascular risk factors but does not test whether treating them prevents dementia.
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Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs), also referred to as microhemorrhages, appear on magnetic resonance (MR) images as hypointense foci notably at T2*-weighted or susceptibility-weighted (SW) imaging.
Why it matters
This review explains how cerebral microbleeds appear on MRI and what they reflect pathologically, including iron accumulation from vasculopathy. It is about imaging and clinical significance and offers no treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Identification of modifiable risk factors provides a crucial approach to the prevention of dementia.
Why it matters
An expert consensus group concluded that elevated plasma total homocysteine is a modifiable risk factor for cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer's disease in older people. Intervention trials in elderly people with cognitive impairment showed that lowering homocysteine with B vitamins slows brain atrophy and cognitive decline, though the statement is based on review of existing evidence rather than a new trial.
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This article provides an updated review of the determinants of caregiver burden and depression, with a focus on care demands and especially the differential effects of various neuropsychiatric symptoms or symptom clusters.
Why it matters
This review found that neuropsychiatric symptoms, especially disruptive behaviors such as agitation, aggression, and disinhibition, are most predictive of caregiver burden and depression regardless of dementia diagnosis. In behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, these disruptive behaviors are more prominent and more disturbing due to the care-recipient's insensitivity to others' feelings, and in Lewy body dementia, visual hallucinations also appear to be distressing.
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Interrater reliability was high (median 0.98).
Why it matters
This study found that qualitative aspects of verbal fluency, such as clustering and switching, differed between patients with subtypes of frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia. It suggests these measures can be used for clinical diagnostic purposes.
From across this topic
10 of the 7,967 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.
- Factors predicting incidence of post-operative delirium in older people following hip fracture surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis
- Potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia in identical twins
- 6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study
- Machine learning algorithms and traditional statistical models for detection of dementia: a population-based study
- Predicting risk of dementia in older adults: The late-life dementia risk index
- Brain in Congenital Heart Disease Across the Lifespan: The Cumulative Burden of Injury
- Mediterranean diet score linked to cognitive functioning in Czech women: a cross-sectional population-based study
- Circulating metabolites, genetics and lifestyle factors in relation to future risk of type 2 diabetes
- Characterising Informal Care in Older Individuals Receiving Long‐Term Home Care Support: A National Epidemiological Study
- Current concepts in mild cognitive impairment