The Importance Of Study Testing On The Apoe Gene

Scientists believed in 1995 that there was a genetic influence in over half the cases of Alzheimer's disease. The gene scientists are giving the most consideration to apolipoprotein E gene (ApoE) as the main gene involved in the development of Alzheimer's disease. Everyone has this gene; if they did not, they would not be alive. ApoE carries a person's cholesterol through their blood. The effect that this gene has in terms of the brain is not totally understood. Scientists have found that

Each patient experiences Alzheimer’s in a different way, some people experience little change with AD and some dwindle fast. The patients diagnosed with AD are typically women. Women make up about two thirds of Alzheimer’s patients. Stanford University School of Medicine researchers has found that women who carry the APOE-E4 gene have a more increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s than their male counterparts with the same

A disease that also requires more research like AD is cancer. Cancer is just as fatal as AD, although cancer can attack any age group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that cancer is the second leading cause of death, compared to AD being the sixth. Cancer, like AD, is also an incurable disease, with medications that aren’t proven to completely defeat the disease, just like AD. Heart disease is the leading cause of death, which also is more likely to happen as the person ages. Diabetes is a disease that affects a person’s glucose levels, which causes the body to not produce enough insulin. Diabetes is also like cancer and can attack any age group, causing it to be the seventh leading cause of death. Influenza and suicide are also in the top ten leading causes of death. Many of the top ten leading causes of death according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include incurable diseases that affect the younger generation and two of the causes of death aren’t even diseases, those two are accidents and suicide. Accidents are inevitable, but suicide can be prevented. Some patients with AD sometimes cannot afford the medication or react badly to the medication, making medication unavailable to some. AD is a fatal disease but it is not the leading cause of death, some cannot afford the medication costs, and other diseases happen to need more research. Although these diseases may need more research as well, they do not cause emotional, mental, and physical health issues with the nurses taking care of the

The underlying risk factors include obesity, physical inactivity and an atherogenic diet. The major risk factors for cardiovascular disease in this syndrome are smoking, hypertension, increased LDL cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol, aging and a family history of coronary events. The emerging risk factors are increased triglycerides, small LDL particles, insulin resistance, a pro inflammatory and prothrombotic state as well as glucose intolerance. The combination of these factors in one person is a predictor of that person having a future cardiovascular event or the onset of type 2 diabetes (Meigs, 2010). With so many risk factors laying down a set of defined parameters can be daunting. It is no wonder researchers often argue over set guidelines. However with more and more people developing these problems, it is necessary to start somewhere.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex and multifactorial neurodegenerative disease and the most common cause of dementia. Finding the potential genes involved in AD is an essential step in molecular diagnosis and is important to understand the mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration. The genetics of early-onset AD (EOAD) are largely understood with mutations in three different genes. In contrast, the genetics of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) are not fully understood. LOAD is much more common and far more complex than EOAD because of the involvement of numerous genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. The apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele has been found to be a main risk factor for LOAD. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs)

The mean onset age of AD is 84.3 years, compared to 75.5 years for subjects with one APOE-4 allele, and 68.4 years for subjects with two APOE alleles. (Corder 1993) While this study was relatively small with just shy of 250 participants, all relevant assertions are backed by statistically significant analysis. It is important to note, however, that a large portion of participants in the study did not have an APOE-4 allele, which suggests other genetic sources of risk exist. Nonetheless, the study depicts strong evidence of the direct link the APOE-4 allele has on AD. Although APP mutations and APOE-4 alleles don’t account for all genetic AD cases, they have led to the discovery of 21 genetic loci that also impact AD. (Guerreiro, 2013) This has narrowed the focus of scientists and allowed them to make advances in continuing to study the link between genetics and AD.

Studies about Alzheimer’s have found that the gene associated with the disease, APOE, or rather the APOE4 gene variant specifically, affects women more. Thereby increasing the risk of a woman to contract Alzheimer’s disease.

While there is some evidence that Alzheimer’s disease has a genetic morphology, linked to the apolipoprotein E ε4 gene, many people carry this gene and never develop Alzheimer’s disease. It is known that most people with trisomy 21 develop Alzheimer’s disease, therefore it is theorized that chromosome 21 is linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. There is some indication that obesity, hypertension, and diabetes may be precipitating factors to the development of Alzheimer’s disease, so maintaining a healthy, active, social lifestyle may help reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, researchers are exploring these and other possibilities regarding potential preventative measures and treatment

APOE2 gives a small chance of preventing the disease if it is present with APOE3. If this gene is passed on by both parents it increases the chance of preventing Alzheimer’s by two (Bremer, Ross, Shaw, Towery, 2012).

A recent three cohorts study reported that the major homozygous allele (AA) of rs3846662, a polymorphism of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-Coenzyme A Reductase (HMGCR), was associated with a delayed age of onset (P=0.017) and a decreased risk for developing sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) (OR=0.521; P=0.0028). The results were reportedly more significant in women and individuals that carried the apolipoprotein E type 4 variant (APOE4), a gene most consistently associated with increased AD risk. While each of the datasets used in their study showed interesting results that suggested that HMGCR plays a role as a potent genetic modifier for AD, none of the studies were unified in their results. We believe that these varied results are caused by the relatively small sample sizes of their datasets (n=574; n=409; n=1232). To better support their assertion, my research performed similar genetic analysis using the Cache County Study on Memory, Health, and Aging, a dataset containing the genetic information and medical history of over 5,000 individuals. While the AA allele of rs3846662 did not show any significant delay in AD age of onset (P=0.33; P=0.1465), I did find the AA allele to provide significant protection (P=0.0425) to all participants, with no significant association to gender (P=0.129; P=0.1105), but significant association with individuals carrying APOE4 and individuals that did not carry apolipoprotein E type 2 variant (APOE2), a gene associated with decreased

The Human Genome Project has aimed to provide us with detailed information about the Human Genome. This will be extremely effective towards studying people with specific diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension and cystic fibrosis. The DNA sequences of any two people are actually very alike. The little difference is those that cause a high risk of an individual developing a certain disease. During the course of

Genetic predisposition is a very important factor in the pathogenesis of AD. It is a highly heritable disease in which phenotype-specific genes

More than five million Americans now suffer from Alzheimer 's disease, and unlike many other diseases there is no known cure for it; furthermore, half of the people over 85 will get it. Unlike most diseases, it 's mainly a genetic disease, and it is now known that a gene called Apo E4 is involved; if you have it (and about 25-percent of the population does) your chances of developing the disease are much greater. The good news, however, is that there are many things you can do to help prevent it.

Since the first clinical manifestation of the CAD may lead to sudden death, primary prevention strategies in healthy individuals, who don’t have any symptoms related to CAD, are essential. It is possible to classify individuals into different risk classifications based on their estimated risk (low, intermediate, and high), and these classifications are used to determine the intensity of preventive measures to be taken, from lifestyle recommendations to drug prescriptions. Several biomarkers, including genetic variants, have been analyzed as candidates for improving the predictive capacity of risks estimation. However, little knowledge is available on the clinical utility of gene expression profiling in CAD patients which can improve the reclassification

HOW CAN NGS FORWARD RESEARCH IN POLYGENIC DISEASES?By Joymariel Melecio-Viñales Recently, I was asked how Next Generation Sequencing technology may lead to significant advances in the study of polygenic diseases. As not being Biology my area of expertise, this question led to a lot of research. The first thing I did was to study the term polygenic, from which my first guess it was to mean “many genes” as poly- derives from the Greek meaning “much or many” and “genic” from gene, either the production of or to be related to genes (YourDictionary, 2013). Therefore, there was a chance of the term polygenic disease to describe a disease or illness related to a disorder in the gene or influenced by many genes. Scientific literature defines a polygenic disease as an affliction that runs in the family, however, only a few members of the family exhibit that phenotype (Alberts, et al., 2008). But what is a phenotype? Well, Alberts, et al. defines phenotypes as a characteristic that can be observed from an individual or a living organism (cells). What is really interesting is that these characteristics can be either physical or behavioral (Alberts, et al., 2008) (T, Jasuja, & Sehgal, 2016)and that these by be affected by either environmental factors or genetic disorders (Kitchen, 2010). This means that those characteristics that define you such as your hair color, eye color, height, skin color and weight, among others, and if you are bipolar or suffer severe anxiety, including any