Variant TREM2 as Risk Factor for Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

Current knowledge about the pathogenic mechanism of Alzheimer's disease is based mainly on rare, high-penetrance variants in genes encoding amyloid precursor protein, presenilin 1, and presenilin 2, which result in familial early-onset Alzheimer's disease. However, Alzheimer's disease is predominantly a sporadic late-onset disease with exponentially increasing prevalence starting at the age of 65 years. Genomewide association studies have recently identified several risk variants for late-onset Alzheimer's disease, but aside from the well-known ε4 allele of apolipoprotein E, these variants are generally associated with very low risk; in addition, such variants are noncoding and more challenging to link to molecular function. . . .