A comparison of familial and sporadic Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Using a liberal criterion, a conservative probability-based criterion, and a criterion for autosomal dominant inheritance, we classified 36%, 13.5%, and 6.4% of 311 patients, respectively, as having familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD). The mean age of onset was over 70 years for all three categories of FAD. FAD and sporadic Alzheimer's disease (SAD) cases did not differ in clinical features, incidence of risk factors for dementia, or MRI or PET features. We observed earlier age of onset of AD to be related positively to longer duration of disease. Except for the autosomal dominant AD group, there was an earlier age of onset in FAD probands. The inheritance of AD from mothers was from 1.7 to 3.6 times more frequent than from fathers. Among SAD patients only, we found a preponderance of women, who were more frequently affected than would be expected from the male/female ratio in the general population of the same average age. Language performance tended to be less affected in FAD than in SAD patients, contrary to some previous reports.

RETRACTED: Mutations in mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase genes segregate with late-onset Alzheimer disease

“…5). Our data, thus, indicate that a tendency toward elevated levels of these mutations can be maternally transmitted in at least some cases, and these results are consistent with recent demonstration of preferential maternal transmission of sporadic AD (8,9). It is also likely that some controls with elevated mutational levels are presymptomatic cases and could develop AD within their lifetime.…”

“…Furthermore, the lack of a family history is a negative risk factor for AD (7), suggesting a previously unrecognized genetic contribution to this disease. Most importantly, the risk of AD increases when a maternal relative is afflicted with this disease, suggesting a unique maternally derived factor (8,9). It is significant that the mitochondrial genome is inherited solely from the mother, whereas the nuclear genome is inherited from both parents.…”

APOE epsilon4 and Alzheimer's disease: positive association in a Colombian clinical series and review of the Latin-American studies

“…High associations have been reported in studies including familial cases [17][18][19][20][21] and late-onset disease 1,22 . Most pedigrees identified as late-onset AD families show high frequencies of the ε4 allele for affected and non affected members and the ocurrence of multiple cases of AD likely involves the sharing of high-risk APOE alleles and of other risk factors 23,24 .…”

Frontotemporal Dementia: Paroxetine as a Possible Treatment of Behavior Symptoms

“…The Lund and Manchester guidelines [5], revised by Miller et al [6], are still debated and continuously modified [7], though the almost constant definition of FTD includes the behavioural alteration, which in all the guidelines represents the core diagnostic features: early loss of personal and social awareness, associated with disinhibition, mental rigidity and inflexibility, distractibility, impulsivity, emotional unconcern (lack of empathy and sympathy, emotional indifference and remoteness) and impersistence are very frequent and distinguish nearly 80% of FTD cases [8, 9]. …”