Differences btwn ApoE4s & non-4s in AD progression w implications in diagnosis & treatment

[TheresaB]

According to this paper, Investigating the APOE4-associated heterogeneity of imaging biomarkers across AD diagnostic stages just published on 9 Jan 2025 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia:

Abstract
Background
Carriers of the apolipoprotein E ε4 (APOE4) allele are at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and display an earlier age of onset compared to non-carriers who develop the disease. While researchers have extensively characterized the impact of APOE4 on the susceptibility of AD, little is known about the differences in disease etiology and presentation in APOE4 carriers vs. non-carriers.
Method
In order to investigate these differences, we performed a broad analysis of imaging biomarkers in APOE4 carriers vs. non-carriers present in the ADNI cohort.
Result
We observed differences between APOE4 carriers vs. non-carriers in several imaging readouts, including Ab-PET, Tau-PET, FDG-PET, and structural MRI measures. These differences were variable based on sex and amyloid positivity. Interestingly, when we compared cognitively normal ADNI participants who converted to MCI or AD to those who did not, we observed APOE4-dependent differences that may point to specific pathologies that mediate MCI/AD conversion in APOE4 carriers vs. non-carriers.
Conclusion
These observations of pathological heterogeneity between APOE4 carriers vs. non-carriers reveal significant differences in disease pathogenesis between these two groups, which may have important implications with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of AD in different genetic cohorts.

FYI, I added the bold font for emphasis.

[Tal_Nuriel_PhD]

Hi Theresa,

You have to be a little bit careful when you post articles from Alzheimer's & Dementia. For some silly reason, they publish the abstracts for talks and posters that were presented at the annual Alzheimer's Association's international conference (AAIC). When that happens, there is no actual paper attached to the abstract, and I imagine it can be frustrating for people who come across it.

This is one of those cases. It's actually an abstract from my lab that was presented as a poster at AAIC 2024 (you can see at the top of the pdf that it says "Poster Presentation"). The actual paper from that work is published here: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wile ... /alz.14392

Tal

[floramaria]

Hi Theresa,

You have to be a little bit careful when you post articles from Alzheimer's & Dementia. For some silly reason, they publish the abstracts for talks and posters that were presented at the annual Alzheimer's Association's international conference (AAIC). When that happens, there is no actual paper attached to the abstract, and I imagine it can be frustrating for people who come across it.

This is one of those cases. It's actually an abstract from my lab that was presented as a poster at AAIC 2024 (you can see at the top of the pdf that it says "Poster Presentation"). The actual paper from that work is published here: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wile ... /alz.14392

Tal

Thanks, Tal, for posting the link to the paper.