Association of serum AACT levels and AACT signal polymorphism with late-onset Alzheimer's disease in Northern Ireland
✍ Scribed by S. P. McIlroy; M. D. Vahidassr; D. A. Savage; F. Lloyd; C. C. Patterson; J. T. Lawson; A. P. Passmore
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 100 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
a1-antichymotrypsin (AACT) is a serine protease inhibitor that has been associated with amyloid plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). It has been reported that AACT serum levels are higher in AD patients than in age and sex matched controls. In addition, polymorphisms in the signal peptide and 5 H of the AACT gene have been reported to increase the risk of developing AD. Serum AACT has also been suggested to be associated with cognitive decline in elderly subjects. Our objective was to investigate whether a relationship existed between serum AACT levels, AACT genotypes and risk for AD in a case control association study using 108 clinically well de®ned late onset AD cases and 108 age and sex matched controls from Northern Ireland. We also wished to determine whether higher serum AACT aected levels of cognition as had been previously reported. Serum AACT levels were found to be signi®cantly raised in cases compared to controls (t 3.8, df 209, p 5 0.001). However, we detected no relationship between serum AACT levels and cognitive decline. We report allelic association of the AACT signal polymorphism with AD (w 2 3.70, df 1, p 0.04) but we failed to show any correlation between AACT serum levels and genotype.