Affiliations: [a] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany | [b] Institute of Molecular Psychiatry, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany | [c] Institute for Biometrics, Hannover Medical School, Germany | [d] Department of Psychiatry, Technical University, Munich, Germany | [e] Central Institute for Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany | [f] Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Health and Public Health, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany | [g] Department of General Practice, University Hospital, Düsseldorf, Germany | [h] Department of Primary Medical Care, University Medical Center, Hamburg, Germany | [i] Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Department of Psychological Medicine and Neurology, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK | [j] German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Frank Jessen, MD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, 53105 Bonn, Germany. Tel.: +49 228 287 11109; Fax: +49 228 287 16097; E-mail: frank.jessen@ukb.uni-bonn.de.
Abstract: A variant within the clusterin gene has been recently associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) in genome wide association studies. Here we tested the association of the respective single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs11136000) with plasma concentration of clusterin in 67 AD subjects and 191 cognitively unimpaired elderly individuals. We observed an association of the rs11136000 AD-risk variant with low clusterin plasma levels in an allele-dose dependent manner in the healthy individuals (p = 0.011). This effect was numerically also present in the AD patients. We conclude that the rs11136000 AD-risk variant is associated with low clusterin plasma levels.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, clusterin, genome wide association study, risk gene
