Primary Genes for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease Risk Differ

(HealthDay News) – A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies suggests that the loci that confer increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease do not overlap; the results of the meta-analysis were published online Aug. 5 in JAMA Neurology.

Valentina Moskvina, PhD, of the Cardiff University School of Medicine in the United Kingdom, and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease using data sets from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to assess genetic overlap.

The researchers found that single nucleotide polymorphism-based, polygenic score, and gene-based analyses failed to identify evidence for loci that increase the risk of both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“Our findings therefore imply that loci that increase the risk of both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease are not widespread and that the pathological overlap could instead be ‘downstream’ of the primary susceptibility genes that increase the risk of each disease,” the authors write.

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