Approved Research

Quantifying risk of APOE4 allele on Alzheimer's disease and diabetes in Indian populations

Lay summary

Alzheimer's disease is marked by dementia and is a huge burden in the Indian population. A gene called APOE is the biggest known genetic risk factor for this disease. A particular variant of this gene-called APOE e4-increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease by changing the structure of a protein in the brain. However, we primarily know about the risk of this gene from populations in Europe. It is possible that this gene has different risk in Indian populations. In fact, African populations have a smaller risk from the APOE e4 allele. Any future genetics studies of AD in Indian samples would benefit from the knowledge of risk from this risk factor. An increased or decreased risk from APOE e4 could lead us to ask what additional risk or protective factors are carried by Indian populations, and could also inform our ability to use genetics for personalized disease risk prediction.