Association of Alzheimer's Disease with APOE and IL-1α Gene Polymorphisms

Abstract

Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene polymorphisms are thought to be the most important genetic risk factor in the pathogenesis of late onset and sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, interleukin-1α (IL-1α) is found to be associated with the pathogenesis of AD. In this research, ε2, ε3, and ε4 polymorphisms of ApoE gene and C889T polymorphism of IL-1α gene were genotyped in patients with AD and controls. Genotyping was performed by real-time polymerase chain reaction. ε3/ε3 and ε3/ε4 genotype frequencies were significantly higher in control and case groups, respectively. While ε3 allele frequencies were significantly higher in the control group, ε2 and ε4 allele frequencies were significantly higher among the cases with AD. No difference was found between the groups according to C889T polymorphism of IL-1α. In conclusion, we demonstrated that there was a strong association between ApoE ε4 allele and AD, while there was no relation with IL-1α C889T polymorphisms for this study.