The effect of APOE on dementia is not through atherosclerosis: the Rotterdam Study.
Slooter AJ., Cruts M., Ott A., Bots ML., Witteman JC., Hofman A., Van Broeckhoven C., Breteler MM., van Duijn CM.
The APOE genotype is involved in atherosclerosis, and atherosclerosis increases the risk of dementia, in particular among carriers of the APOE-epsilon4 allele. We studied, in a population-based setting (244 dementia cases; 1,002 nondemented controls), whether APOE is associated with dementia through atherosclerosis. As neither adjusting nor stratification for atherosclerosis altered the association of APOE with dementia, our study suggests that atherosclerosis is not an intermediate factor.