Genetic study of Apolipoprotein E gene,alpha‐1 antichymotrypsin gene in sporadic Parkinson disease

Several lines of evidence have suggested some common genetic risk factors for Alzheimer disease (AD) and Parkinson disease (PD) because there are some overlapping pathologies in these two neurodegenerative diseases. In the present study, we investigated the role of Apolipoprotein E gene polymorphism and the signal peptide polymorphism in alpha‐1 antichymotrypsin (ACT) gene in idiopathic sporadic PD. The study was performed in a sample consisting of 68 PD cases and 160 healthy subjects in Shanghai China. We found no significant differences of ACT gene polymorphic distribution between PD cases and controls. The ApoE gene ε2/ε4 genotype was significantly more frequent in PD subjects (χ² = 7.126, df = 1, P = 0.008) and conferred a 12.70 times susceptibility for PD (OR = 12.62, 95% CI: 1.445–110.17, χ² = 5.259, P < 0.05, AF = 4.59%). No interaction of ApoE and ACT genes was detected in PD. Therefore, our data suggested that the ApoE ε2/ε4 genotype might be a susceptibility variant of moderate effect for sporadic idiopathic PD in our samples, whereas the ACT gene signal peptide polymorphism might not. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.