Association of apolipoprotein E gene polymorphism with cognitive abilities variability of elderly people

Abstract

Physiological changes in the brain with natural aging and the development of dementia have a common genetic basis, which makes it important to search for genetic variants that delineate the natural decline in cognitive abilities with age and dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. Objective: the search for the relationship between two polymorphic variants (rs429358 and rs7412) APOE gene and their protein isoforms (apoE) with the variability of cognitive functions in the elderly, determined by Montreal Cognitive Assessmnet (MoCA) total score. The study was performed on a group of 695 elderly people (177 men and 518 women) tested by a battery of MoCA tests. Genotyping was carried out by real-time PCR using TaqMan probes. The analysis of genotypic variability associations with the nominal trait was performed by the Kruskel-Wallis and the median test nonparametric methods.It was shown that the rs429358*C allele carriers and protein isoforms e4/e4+e2/e4+e3/e4 carriers in comparison with the e3/e3 homozygous have the greatest risk of decreased cognitive abilities in old age (OR (95% CI) was 1.51 (1.09 - 2.10), c = 6.66, p = 0.01 and OR = 1.64, 95% CI (1.11 - 2.44), c = 6.76, p = 0.009, respectively). Probably, the revealed associations indicate to the presence of common genes and mechanisms for dementia and intellect with normal variability of cognitive functions inheritance.