Interventions

Interventions include anything intended to prevent, slow, or manage neurodegenerative disease. On Axonome, these are broken down into medical treatments, lifestyle interventions, and supplements. Supplements are often marketed for brain health but vary widely in evidence quality. These categories should not be treated as equal. Some interventions are approved therapies with clinical trial support, some are reasonable risk-reduction strategies, and others are biologically interesting but unproven.

Understanding the evidence requires knowing the types of studies behind each claim. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the strongest form of clinical evidence because participants are assigned to treatment or control groups, helping test whether an intervention actually causes benefit. Observational studies follow people over time or compare groups, which can reveal important associations but cannot fully prove causation because healthier people often differ in many ways at once. Preclinical studies are done in cells or animal models and are useful for understanding mechanisms, but many promising results fail to translate to humans. Our intervention pages will walk you through the biological reasoning behind the intervention, what studies of the intervention have shown, and some of the limitations and safety issues.