SynthesisProgress in neurobiology2011
Iron, zinc and copper in the Alzheimer's disease brain: a quantitative meta-analysis. Some insight on the influence of citation bias on scientific opinion.
Synthesis in Progress in neurobiology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 107 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
107 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 260 citations in OpenAlex.
- Are high copper levels related to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases? A systematic review and meta-analysis of articles published between 2011 and 2022.Biometals : an international journal on the role of metal ions in biology, biochemistry, and medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Copper Imbalance in Alzheimer's Disease: Meta-Analysis of Serum, Plasma, and Brain Specimens, and Replication Study EvaluatingBiomolecules · 2021Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of brain iron levels of Parkinson's disease patients determined by postmortem and MRI measurements.Scientific reports · 2016Pooled it
- Allelic variation in the ATP7B gene promoter. Implications for phenotype variability, neurodegeneration and Pt resistance in tumor diseases.Journal of human genetics · 2026Article
- The Central Role of Neuronal Cell Death in Alzheimer's Disease Pathobiology.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- From General-Purpose to Disease-Specific Features: Aligning LLM Embeddings on a Disease-Specific Biomedical Knowledge Graph for Drug Repurposing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Environmental toxins in neurodegeneration - a narrative review.Neurological research and practice · 2025Review
- Copper homeostasis and cuproptosis in Alzheimer's disease (Review).International journal of molecular medicine · 2025Review
- Cell-specific copper dyshomeostasis mechanism in Alzheimer's disease.Translational neurodegeneration · 2025Review
- A primer on copper biology in the brain.Neurobiology of disease · 2025Review
- Post-mortem human Alzheimer´s brain metallome depends on Braak stages and brain regions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Alterations in zinc, copper, and iron levels in the retina and brain of Alzheimer's disease patients and the APP/PS1 mouse model.Metallomics : integrated biometal science · 2024Article
- Recent Advances in Targeting Transition Metals (Copper, Iron, and Zinc) in Alzheimer's Disease.Molecular neurobiology · 2024Review
- Decreased spinal cord motor neuron numbers in mice depleted of central nervous system copper.Metallomics : integrated biometal science · 2024Article
- An N-terminal acidic β-sheet domain is responsible for the metal-accumulation properties of amyloid-β protofibrils: a molecular dynamics study.Journal of biological inorganic chemistry : JBIC : a publication of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry · 2024Article
- HFE Mutations in Neurodegenerative Disease as a Model of Hormesis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Exosomal Dynamics and Brain Redox Imbalance: Implications in Alzheimer's Disease Pathology and Diagnosis.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Restoring cellular copper homeostasis in Alzheimer disease: a novel peptide shuttle is internalized by an ATP-dependent endocytosis pathway involving Rab5- and Rab14-endosomes.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2024Article
- α-Lipoic acid: a potential regulator of copper metabolism in Alzheimer's disease.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2024Article
- The Impact of Hydroxytyrosol on the Metallomic-Profile in an Animal Model of Alzheimer's Disease.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
47 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Dysfunctional homeostasis of transition metals is believed to play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although questioned by some, brain copper, zinc, and particularly iron overload are widely accepted features of AD which have led to the hypothesis that oxidative stress generated from aberrant homeostasis of these transition metals might be a pathogenic mechanism behind AD. This meta-analysis compiled and critically assessed available quantitative data on brain iron, zinc and copper levels in AD patients compared to aged controls. The results were very heterogeneous. A series of heavily cited articles from one laboratory reported a large increase in iron in AD neocortex compared to age-matched controls (p<0.0001) while seven laboratories failed to reproduce these findings reporting no significant difference between the groups (p=0.76). A more than three-fold citation bias was found to favor outlier studies reporting increases in iron and this bias was particularly prominent among narrative review articles. Additionally, while zinc was not significantly changed in the neocortex (p=0.29), copper was significantly depleted in AD (p=0.0003). In light of these findings, it will be important to re-evaluate the hypothesis that transition metal overload accounts for oxidative injury noted in AD.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.