Her work in the Rotterdam Scan Study led to important insights about Alzheimer's disease, in particular the role of lifestyle factors, metabolic disorders, inflammation, and vascular mechanisms.
[2] At the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Breteler is establishing the Rhineland Study, a prospective cohort study of 30,000 individuals that aims to identify causes and preclinical multimodal biomarker profiles of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and to investigate normal and pathological brain structure and function over the adult life course.
[5] In 1998 Breteler received a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for her work on vascular factors in Alzheimer's disease, and in 2003 a prestigious VICI grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research for her prospective population-based neuro-imaging studies.
[6][7] In 2012 Breteler spoke at the Falling Walls conference in Berlin,[8] according to the official Falling Walls organization to "focus attention on a new age of health research aimed at optimizing brain function and quality of life throughout the entire life span".
She has also taken up various roles to advice on public health policy, e.g. as speaker at the 2014 "The future of Europe is science" conference organized by the European Commission and opened by José Manuel Barroso.