With the landscape of Alzheimer's and dementia research and clinical practice changing rapidly, it is critical that health care professionals stay abreast of the latest clinical research in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and caregiving. The Alzheimer's Association is leading the development of evidence-based clinical guidance — including appropriate use criteria (AUC) and clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) — to help translate the best-available science into actionable recommendations. These resources are designed to help clinical professionals stay current with the latest scientific breakthroughs in dementia research and disease diagnosis, management, treatment and care.

The clinical practice guideline development process

Evidence-based clinical decision making combines a clinician’s expertise, patients' values and preferences, and the best-available evidence to ensure patient care is as consistent, safe and effective as possible. Clinical practice guidelines distill this evidence and provide scientific support for not only clinical decision making, but also shared decision making with patients and systems-level policymaking.

The Association's process for developing guidelines involves synthesizing evidence and translating it into clear, actionable recommendations in close collaboration with a guideline panel of clinical and subject-matter experts, methodologists, external organizations, early-career ISTAART volunteers and patient representatives. The Association also provides two opportunities for public comment during the guideline development process: Once after the guideline panel drafts the scope of the guideline and once after they formulate recommendations.

The Association utilizes a rigorous and transparent guideline development framework/methodology called GRADE — a widely used approach for rating the quality or certainty of a body of evidence and assigning strength of recommendations — combined with systematic reviews of the best available evidence to inform clinical practice guideline recommendations.

A hybrid methodology will continue to be used for the development of appropriate use criteria and other Association guidance products.

The Alzheimer’s Association is committed to the development of trustworthy clinical practice guidelines and has established rules (PDF) for collecting conflict of interest disclosures from all involved parties. Ultimately, all financial and intellectual disclosures and our methods for managing them will be publicly reported in our published guideline manuscripts.

The Alzheimer's Association will update clinical practice guidelines regularly to ensure they evolve in parallel with advances in science and the needs of clinical practice.

Published clinical practice guidelines

Blood-based biomarkers in specialty care settings

In July 2025, in collaboration with a comprehensive guideline panel, the Alzheimer's Association published its first evidence-based CPG on incorporating blood-based biomarker testing into Alzheimer's diagnosis and management. This CPG is designed to support health care professionals in specialty care settings who are seeing patients with cognitive impairment. 

View the full guideline, including recommendations and supporting tools.

Upcoming guidelines

The Association is also currently preparing or will soon prepare guidelines on:

• The use of cognitive assessment tools for detecting MCI and dementia in primary health care settings.

• ​The staging of Alzheimer's disease.

• Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Existing resources for clinical decision making

• Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnostic Evaluation, Testing, Counseling and Disclosure of Suspected Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders (DETeCD-ADRD)
• Criteria for diagnosis and staging of Alzheimer's disease

• Appropriate use criteria for lumbar puncture and cerebrospinal fluid testing in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

• Appropriate use criteria for amyloid PET

• Lecanemab AUR and clinical toolkit (PDF)

• Donanemab AUR and clinical toolkit

• Recommendations for detecting cognitive impairment in primary care (PDF)

• Differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease
• Differential diagnosis for other dementias

Contact us

Questions and concerns about Alzheimer's Association clinical guidance can be directed to Malavika Tampi, MPH, Director, Clinical Practice Guidelines at mptampi@alz.org.