Alzheimer's and Dementia: Alzheimer's risk gene APOE 4 affects older people of all ethnicities differently.

Lipoprotein E (APOE) is the most powerful genetic risk factor for advanced Alzheimer's disease (AD).
people with one allegen were 2-3 times more likely to develop AD than those without the gene, and about 12 times more likely to develop AD in people with two allegens.
While non-Hispanic blacks and older Hispanics bear a disproportionate burden of AD and cognitive impairment compared to non-Hispanic whites, the relationship between APOE 4 and AD risk is different among different racial/ethnic groups.
Although non-Hispanic blacks have a higher frequency of APOE 4 allegens than non-Hispanic whites, most studies have shown that non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics have a weaker relationship with AD.
functional connection (rsFC), especially in the default mode network (DMN), is easily affected in the earliest stages of AD pathology, which occurs in the years prior to the onset of symptoms, indicating the potential of rsFC as an early marker of AD for synapses and neuron dysfunction.
previous studies have also reported that the APOE-4 allegase gene is associated with decreased DMN connectivity and function in cognitively normal older adults, even without amyloid build-up and atrophy.
, however, previous studies of the relationship between APOE and rsFC included white adults of mainly European descent whose status in other ethnic groups was not entirely clear.
recently, researchers at Alzheimer's Dementia magazine, which looked at rsFCs within the DMN subsyscies, included 170 APOE 4 carriers and 387 APOE 4 non-carriers across three major racial/ethnic groups in the United States, including non-Hispanic whites (n s 166), non-Hispanic blacks (n s 185) and Hispanics (n s 206) from the Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project.
results show that APOE 4 carriers have lower rsFC in the temporal DMN than non-carriers of APOE 4, but this is limited to non-Hispanic whites.
the RSFC of non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics of APOE 4 carriers was slightly higher or similar compared to non-Hispanic white APOE 4 non-carriers.
these studies show that APOE 4 regulates DMN rsFC differently for non-Hispanic whites than for non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics.
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