APOE3 tagged posts

Of all the known genetic risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the strongest is a gene for the protein called ApoE4. People with one copy of this gene are 3.5 times more likely, on average, to develop Alzheimer’s than others, and those with two copies face a 12-fold increased risk. However, exactly how ApoE4 boosts the risk of Alzheimer’s remains unclear.

Multiple types of cells in the brain make ApoE4—some of it is produced by neurons, but other brain cells called glia make it in higher quantities. For that reason, most prior research on this protein has focused on ApoE4 from glia.

Now, researchers at G...

Because three percent of the world population possesses these gene variants, the findings may have implications for hundreds of millions of individuals around the world

It may be the most baffling quirk of COVID: What manifests as minor, flu-like symptoms in some individuals spirals into severe disease, disability, and even death in others. A new paper published in Nature may explain the genetic underpinnings of this dichotomy.

The researchers demonstrated that mice with gene variants previously linked to Alzheimer’s disease were at greater risk of dying when infected with COVID. And a retrospective analysis suggests that patients with those same gene variants were more likely to have died of COVID throughout the pandemic...