Gene linked to risk of late-onset Alzheimer's:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
An international team of researchers has found an association between the CST3 gene and late-onset Alzheimer's disease. The researchers, based in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the US, studied 517 Alzheimer's patients and 390 control subjects. They found that individuals who were over the age of 75 and homozygous for the CST3 gene, which encodes the endogenous proteinase inhibitor, cystatin C, were nearly nine times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as heterozygous individuals. Reporting their findings in the November issue of Archives of Neurology, they conclude that CST3 is a susceptibility gene for late-onset Alzheimer's disease, especially in patients aged over 75.