Alzheimer’s Study Finds Same Variant Genes in Blacks - NYTimes.com: African-Americans have a slightly higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease than people of largely European ancestry, but there is no major genetic difference that could account for the slight excess risk, new research shows.
The results are from one of the only large studies ever done on Alzheimer’s in African-Americans. Researchers identified the same gene variants in older African-Americans that they had found in older people of European ancestry. But they found that African-Americans with Alzheimer’s disease were slightly more likely to have one gene, ABCA7, that is thought to confer risk for the disease.
Another gene, APoE4, long known to increase Alzheimer’s risk in older white people, was present in about the same proportion of African-Americans with Alzheimer’s as it is in people of European ancestry.
