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Although the apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) allele has consistently been associated with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia in many studies,1 its association with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is controversial. After our report in 1997 of increased apoE4 allele frequencies in sporadic FTD and its effect on the age at onset,2 other studies of cases of FTD with pathological confirmation or tau mutations did not confirm this effect.3–5 However, recently it has been shown that semantic dementia, the temporal variant of FTD, may be associated with higher frequencies of the apoE4 allele.6 Therefore, we have genotyped apoE in our expanded FTD patient population and have assessed whether patients with predominance of temporal atrophy have higher frequencies of the apoE4 allele.
Patients were ascertained through a clinicoepidemiological survey of patients with FTD in The Netherlands.2 We identified 111 patients with the …