Failure to confirm a synergistic effect between the K-variant of the butyrylcholinesterase gene and the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein gene in Japanese patients with Alzheimer’s disease
- aDepartment of Psychiatry and Neurology, Kobe University School of Medicine, bHyogo Institute of Aging Brain and Cognitive Disorders, Himeji, Japan
- Dr Yasuji Yamamoto, Hyogo Institute for Aging Brain and Cognitive Disorders, 520 Saisho-ko, Himeji 670–0981, Japan. Telephone 0081 792 95 5511; fax 0081 792 95 8199; email yama-y{at}hiabcd.go.jp
- Received 21 September 1998
- Revised 8 January 1999
- Accepted 19 January 1999
Abstract
To confirm a synergistic effect between the polymorphic K variant of the butyrylcholinesterase (BChE-K) gene and the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene in Alzheimer’s disease, the frequency of the BChE-K allele was re-examined in a large series of Japanese patients with Alzheimer’s disease and controls. Two hundred and three patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 288 age and sex matched controls were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism for BChE-K and APOE. No changes were found in the frequency of BChE-K, either in the Alzheimer’s disease group as a whole (0.17v 0.14; p=0.36) or in early (0.16v 0.16; p=0.98) or late (0.17v 0.13; p=0.24) onset patients compared with age matched controls. The study failed to confirm the findings of a previous study which found a significantly higher incidence of BChE-K in patients with Alzheimer’s disease with APOE ε4 allele than in controls. In the Japanese population studied here, there was no association between BChE-K and Alzheimer’s disease, nor an interaction between BChE-K and APOE ε4 allele.
