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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Neuropsychological assessment of older individuals with dementing illnesses has suffered from a lack of appropriately designed test instruments.
Why it matters
This preliminary study found that the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) produced opposite cognitive profiles in very mildly demented Alzheimer's disease patients compared with Huntington's disease patients, despite similar total scores. It is an assessment tool study with small samples (20 AD patients, 20 HD patients, 40 controls), not a treatment, cure, or prevention study.
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Subjects 90 elderly subjects were studied (45 elderly and well persons from the independent living apartments of a continuing care retirement community and 45 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease).
Why it matters
This study describes a clock drawing task designed to detect executive impairment and distinguish it from non-executive constructional failure. It is a test-development study comparing elderly well persons, patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, and young adult controls, not a treatment study.
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Global staging measures for dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) assess the influence of cognitive loss on the ability to conduct everyday activities and represent the "ultimate test" of efficacy for antidementia drug trials.
Why it matters
Describes the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), a scale that uses interviews with the patient and an informant to rate six areas, such as memory and personal care, and stage dementia of the Alzheimer type. The authors report established reliability and validity, but note it is not well suited as a brief screening tool for population surveys. The scale measures dementia; it does not treat it.
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The aim of the study was to investigate the value of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) for use by general practitioners (GPs) in a group of elderly patients in whom the GPs are considering a dementia diagnosis.
Why it matters
This cross-sectional study examined how well the Mini-Mental State Examination and its individual items diagnosed dementia in 533 elderly general practice patients. It is about the limitations of a diagnostic test, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Most patients who enter hospice care do so late in the course of their terminal illnesses.
Why it matters
This study examined survival after enrollment in hospice programs among Medicare patients, most of whom had cancer. It is about end-of-life care and survival, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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The Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) has a score range of 0 to 100 and provides quantitative assessment on attention, concentration, orientation, short-term memory, long-term memory, language abilities, visual construction, list-generating fluency, abstraction, and judgment.
Why it matters
Describes the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI), a test scored 0 to 100 covering attention, memory, language, judgment and other abilities, which typically takes 15 to 20 minutes. Pilot testing in Japan and the United States supported its use across cultures in screening for dementia. It is a screening tool and does not itself treat dementia.
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Why it matters
Examines education and the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
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The Cardiovascular Health Study is a population-based, longitudinal study designed to evaluate factors related to the onset, course, and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke in adults aged 65 years and older.
Why it matters
Describes the design and rationale of the Cardiovascular Health Study.
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The CAM is sensitive, specific, reliable, and easy to use for identification of delirium.
Why it matters
This study developed and tested the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM), a tool that lets clinicians who are not psychiatrists detect delirium quickly. It can be completed in less than 5 minutes, and when checked against psychiatrists' diagnoses in 56 older patients at both study sites, the authors found it sensitive, specific, reliable and easy to use.
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This paper views caregiver stress as a consequence of a process comprising a number of interrelated conditions, including the socioeconomic characteristics and resources of caregivers and the primary and secondary stressors to which they are exposed.
Why it matters
Describes caregiver stress as a process shaped by caregivers' socioeconomic characteristics and resources and by the stressors they face, both those rooted directly in caregiving and strains in other roles and in self-concept. It notes that coping and social support can potentially step in at several points along this process.
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We administered 3 commonly employed tests of mental status (the Information-Memory-Concentration test [IMC], the Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE], and the Dementia Rating Scale [DRS]) to 92 patients with probable dementia of the Alzheimer type.
Why it matters
This study gave three mental status tests to 92 Alzheimer's patients and repeated them over one to two years, finding the tests were highly correlated and measuring the average yearly decline in scores. It describes how cognitive test scores change over time in the disease, not how to treat, cure or prevent it.
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With a psychiatrist's standardized clinical diagnosis as the criterion, the 'Mini-Mental State' Examination (MMSE) was 87% sensitive and 82% specific in detecting dementia and delirium among hospital patients on a general medical ward.
Why it matters
In hospital patients on a general medical ward, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) picked up 87% of people a psychiatrist diagnosed with dementia or delirium and correctly cleared 82% of those without, but every false positive was in someone with less than 9 years of schooling. The authors concluded the MMSE is useful as a first screen only "when later, more intensive diagnostic enquiry is possible" and that it "cannot yield a diagnosis" on its own. It is a 1982 study of a screening test, not of treatment or prevention.
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51/100
The CES-D scale is a short self-report scale designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population.
Why it matters
The CES-D scale is a short self-report scale designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population, tested in household interview surveys and psychiatric settings. It was found to have very high internal consistency and adequate test-retest repeatability, and the authors state it should be a useful tool for epidemiologic studies of depression.
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Multivariable Firth penalized logistic regression identified factors associated with baseline functional impairment.
Why it matters
In this study of older adults with epilepsy, temporal lobe epilepsy, early-onset epilepsy, and lower education were associated with baseline functional impairment, and about one-third progressed to worse function over 2 years. It examines functional decline in epilepsy, not treatment, cure, or prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
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Secondary outcomes included plan- and county-level factors associated with offering this benefit in 2025, estimated using multivariable mixed-effects logistic regression with county-level random intercepts.
Why it matters
This cross-sectional study found that the proportion of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in plans with no cost sharing for in-network primary care visits rose from 46.4% in 2019 to 78.1% in 2025. It contains no research findings on treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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50/100
The study cohort included 1 415 265 long-stay nursing home residents with dementia who died between 2013 and 2022.
Why it matters
This study found that nursing home residents with dementia who were enrolled in certain Medicare Advantage special needs plans were less likely to be hospitalized near the end of life. It is about end-of-life care and hospital use, not about treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease itself.
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Dementia research often suffers from methodological pitfalls such as label-information and subject-information leakages.
Why it matters
This work sets up a leakage-free benchmark for predicting dementia status over time using demographic and neuroimaging data, after excluding the Clinical Dementia Rating from the predictors. It is a methods-focused study and does not test any treatment, prevention or cure.
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Among 547 310 older adults undergoing surgery, 43 041 (7·9%) had preoperative dementia.
Why it matters
In this large US cohort, preoperative dementia was associated with higher 30-day mortality and postoperative delirium after surgery, with delirium mediating much of the mortality risk and loss of independence mediating healthcare use. The findings highlight pathways for monitoring and prevention of complications, not a treatment or cure for dementia itself.
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In their study, Chen et al 1 examined the association between apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype and longitudinal cognitive trajectories among middle-aged and older East Asian adults participating in the Healthy Aging Longitudinal Study of Taiwan (HALST).Although sporadic late-onset Alzheimer disease (AD) is polygenic, APOE remains the strongest genetic determinant of AD risk, with carriers of the APOE ε4 allele having increased odds of developing AD dementia in a dose-dependent manner compared with APOE ε3 homozygotes.
Why it matters
This commentary discusses a study of APOE genotype and longitudinal cognitive trajectories among middle-aged and older East Asian adults in Taiwan. It notes that APOE ε4 carriers have increased odds of developing Alzheimer dementia in a dose-dependent manner, and that the strength of this association varies by genetic ancestry.
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50/100
The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Observational Study (DIAN Obs) is a longitudinal, global cohort study investigating brain aging and autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease (ADAD), a rare monogenic form of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Why it matters
This describes 15 years of the DIAN Observational Study, a global longitudinal cohort collecting genetic, clinical, cognitive, imaging and biochemical data from people at risk for autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease. It provides a resource to study disease trajectory from presymptomatic to symptomatic stages, but it is not a treatment or prevention trial.
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= 0.02). Lifetime exposure to cognitive enrichment was related to lower risk of AD dementia and a slower rate of cognitive decline, including after adjustment for common ADRD pathologies, indicating higher resilience provided by lifetime enrichment.
Why it matters
This longitudinal study found that lifetime exposure to cognitive enrichment was related to lower risk of Alzheimer's disease dementia and a slower rate of cognitive decline, even after adjustment for common ADRD pathologies. This suggests that cognitive health in later life is in part the product of lifetime enrichment, indicating higher resilience.
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Lower SES and education were the strongest predictors of increased behavioral risk.
Why it matters
Lower socioeconomic status and education were more strongly linked to dementia risk than knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, and knowledge accuracy and confidence were not significantly associated with risk. This suggests that improving public awareness alone may not reduce risk, and equity-focused strategies are needed.
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Vestibular disorders were linked to higher risks of all‐cause dementia (HR 1.86 and 95% CI 1.04–3.30), Alzheimer's disease (AD, 2.36, and 1.01–5.51), and vascular dementia (VD, 3.35, and 1.48–7.59).
Why it matters
This cohort study found that vestibular disorders were linked to higher risks of all-cause dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and vascular dementia, with certain metabolites and brain structure changes possibly involved. It suggests that treating vestibular disorders could be incorporated into dementia prevention efforts, but it does not show that treating them prevents dementia.
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The progressive nature of dementia necessitates early detection strategies capable of identifying preclinical cognitive decline.
Why it matters
This bibliometric review maps research on wearable sensors and gait analysis for early dementia detection and finds the field is still growing. It reports major gaps in long-term validation, standardized methods, and use in clinical workflows, so gait sensors are not yet an established way to prevent or treat dementia.
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The sample (n = 26,728) was equally distributed across gender (55.1% women) and education (50.8% completed HS/GED diploma), and 30% came from under-represented racial/ethnic groups.
Why it matters
This study found that living in a more disadvantaged neighborhood in midlife was linked to worse cognitive performance, faster decline, and higher dementia risk in some groups. It is about social context and dementia risk, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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.
- Dying comfortably in very old age with or without dementia in different care settings - a representative "older old" population study
- The Mediterranean Diet and Cognitive Function among Healthy Older Adults in a 6-Month Randomised Controlled Trial: The MedLey Study
- Families' Experiences With End-of-Life Care in Nursing Homes and Associations With Dying Peacefully With Dementia
- Pathological correlates of late-onset dementia in a multicentre, community-based population in England and Wales. Neuropathology Group of the Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (MRC CFAS)
- Ambient air pollution and clinical dementia: systematic review and meta-analysis
- Clinical prediction models using artificial intelligence approaches in dementia
- End-of-life treatment decisions in nursing home residents dying with dementia in the Netherlands
- Intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis: risk factors, diagnosis, and treatment
- POLICY SERIES: INEQUITABLE IMPACTS OF POLICY AND PAYMENT CHANGES ON CARE USE AND OUTCOMES FOR OLDER ADULTS WITH HIGH CARE NEEDS
- Improving memory in Parkinson's disease: a healthy brain ageing cognitive training program