scholarly journals GWAS on family history of Alzheimer’s disease

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo E. Marioni ◽  
Sarah E. Harris ◽  
Allan F. McRae ◽  
Qian Zhang ◽  
Saskia P. Hagenaars ◽  
...  

AbstractAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is a public health priority for the 21st century. Risk reduction currently revolves around lifestyle changes with much research trying to elucidate the biological underpinnings. Using self-report of parental history of Alzheimer’s dementia for case ascertainment in a genome-wide association study of over 300,000 participants from UK Biobank (32,222 maternal cases, 16,613 paternal cases) and meta-analysing with published consortium data (n=74,046 with 25,580 cases across the discovery and replication analyses), six new AD-associated loci (P<5x10−8) are identified. Three contain genes relevant for AD and neurodegeneration: ADAM10, ADAMTS4, and ACE. Suggestive loci include drug targets such as VKORC1 (warfarin dose) and BZRAP1 (benzodiazepine receptor). We report evidence that association of SNPs and AD at the PVR gene is potentially mediated by both gene expression and DNA methylation in the prefrontal cortex. Our discovered loci may help to elucidate the biological mechanisms underlying AD and, given that many are existing drug targets for other diseases and disorders, warrant further exploration for potential precision medicine applications.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Reddy ◽  
Mariet Allen ◽  
Charlotte C. G. Ho ◽  
Stephanie R. Oatman ◽  
Özkan İş ◽  
...  

AbstractCerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) contributes to accelerated cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia and is a common finding at autopsy. The APOEε4 allele and male sex have previously been reported to associate with increased CAA in AD. To inform biomarker and therapeutic target discovery, we aimed to identify additional genetic risk factors and biological pathways involved in this vascular component of AD etiology. We present a genome-wide association study of CAA pathology in AD cases and report sex- and APOE-stratified assessment of this phenotype. Genome-wide genotypes were collected from 853 neuropathology-confirmed AD cases scored for CAA across five brain regions, and imputed to the Haplotype Reference Consortium panel. Key variables and genome-wide genotypes were tested for association with CAA in all individuals and in sex and APOEε4 stratified subsets. Pathway enrichment was run for each of the genetic analyses. Implicated loci were further investigated for functional consequences using brain transcriptome data from 1,186 samples representing seven brain regions profiled as part of the AMP-AD consortium. We confirmed association of male sex, AD neuropathology and APOEε4 with increased CAA, and identified a novel locus, LINC-PINT, associated with lower CAA amongst APOEε4-negative individuals (rs10234094-C, beta = −3.70 [95% CI −0.49—−0.24]; p = 1.63E-08). Transcriptome profiling revealed higher LINC-PINT expression levels in AD cases, and association of rs10234094-C with altered LINC-PINT splicing. Pathway analysis indicates variation in genes involved in neuronal health and function are linked to CAA in AD patients. Further studies in additional and diverse cohorts are needed to assess broader translation of our findings.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atul Kumar ◽  
Maryam Shoai ◽  
Sebastian Palmqvist ◽  
Erik Stomrud ◽  
John Hardy ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Cognitive decline in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may depend on genetic variability. Methods In the Swedish BioFINDER study, we used polygenic scores (PGS) (for AD, intelligence and educational attainment), and genetic variants (in a genome-wide association study [GWAS]) to predict longitudinal cognitive change (measured by MMSE) over a mean of 4.2 years. We included 555 β-amyloid (Aβ) negative cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals, 206 Aβ-positive CU (preclinical AD), 110 Aβ-negative mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, and 146 Aβ-positive MCI patients (prodromal AD). Results Polygenic scores for AD (in Aβ-positive individuals) and intelligence (independent of Aβ-status) were associated with cognitive decline. Eight genes were associated with cognitive decline in GWAS (3 independent of Aβ-status). Conclusions AD risk genes may influence cognitive decline in early AD, while genes related to intelligence may modulate cognitive decline irrespective of disease. Therapies targeting the implicated biological pathways may modulate the clinical course of AD.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheida Rabipour ◽  
Sricharana Rajagopal ◽  
Elsa Yu ◽  
Stamatoula Pasvanis ◽  
John Breitner ◽  
...  

AbstractEpisodic memory decline is one of the earliest symptoms of late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and older adults with the apolipoprotein E e4 (+APOE4) genetic risk factor for AD may exhibit altered patterns of memory-related brain activity years prior to initial symptom onset. In the current study we report the baseline episodic memory task fMRI results from the PRe-symptomatic EValuation of Experimental or Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease (PREVENT-AD) study in Montreal, Canada, in which 327 healthy older adults, within 15 years of the parent’s conversion to AD, were scanned. During the task fMRI protocol volunteers were scanned as they encoded and retrieved object-location spatial source associations. The task was designed to discriminate between brain activity related to successful spatial source recollection and failures in spatial source recollection, with memory for only item (object) memory. Multivariate task-related partial least squares (task PLS) was used to test the hypothesis that +APOE4 adults with a family history of AD would exhibit altered patterns of brain activity in the recollection-related memory network, comprised of medial frontal, parietal and medial temporal cortices, compared to APOE4 non-carriers (-APOE4). We also tested for group differences in the correlation between event-related brain activity and memory performance in +APOE4 compared to -APOE4 adults using behavioral-PLS (B-PLS). We found group similarities in memory performance and in task-related brain activity in the recollection network. However, the B-PLS results indicated there were group differences in brain activity-behavior correlations in ventral occipito-temporal, medial temporal, and medial prefrontal cortices during episodic encoding. These findings are consistent with previous literature on the influence of APOE4 on brain activity and provide new perspective on potential gene-based differences in brain-behavior relationships in people with parental history of AD. Future research should further investigate the potential to distinguish risk of AD development based on memory performance and associated patterns of brain activity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atul Kumar ◽  
Maryam Shoai ◽  
Sebastian Palmqvist ◽  
Erik Stomrud ◽  
John Hardy ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Cognitive decline in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may depend on genetic variability. Methods In the Swedish BioFINDER study, we used polygenic scores (PGS) (for AD, intelligence and educational attainment), and genetic variants (in a genome-wide association study [GWAS]) to predict longitudinal cognitive change (measured by MMSE) over a mean of 4.2 years. We included 555 β-amyloid (Aβ) negative cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals, 206 Aβ-positive CU (preclinical AD), 110 Aβ-negative mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, and 146 Aβ-positive MCI patients (prodromal AD). Results Polygenic scores for AD (in Aβ-positive individuals) and intelligence (independent of Aβ-status) were associated with cognitive decline. Eight genes were associated with cognitive decline in GWAS (3 independent of Aβ-status). Conclusions AD risk genes may influence cognitive decline in early AD, while genes related to intelligence may modulate cognitive decline irrespective of disease. Therapies targeting the implicated biological pathways may modulate the clinical course of AD.


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