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Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults

BACKGROUND: Possession of the ε4 allele of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Early adult life effects of ε4 are less well understood. Working memory has been relatively little studied (compared to episodic memory) in relation to APOE genoty...

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Autores principales: Sinclair, Lindsey I., Button, Katherine S., Munafò, Marcus R., Day, Ian N. M., Lewis, Glyn
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545585/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26287823
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135894
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author Sinclair, Lindsey I.
Button, Katherine S.
Munafò, Marcus R.
Day, Ian N. M.
Lewis, Glyn
author_facet Sinclair, Lindsey I.
Button, Katherine S.
Munafò, Marcus R.
Day, Ian N. M.
Lewis, Glyn
author_sort Sinclair, Lindsey I.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Possession of the ε4 allele of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Early adult life effects of ε4 are less well understood. Working memory has been relatively little studied (compared to episodic memory) in relation to APOE genotype despite its importance in cognitive functioning. Our hypothesis was that ε4 would lead to an impairment in working memory in young adults. METHODS: We studied working memory using a computerised n-back task in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) at age 18. Data was available for 1049–1927 participants and for the 2- and 3-back versions of the task. Using multiple and multi-level regression controlling for important confounders we examined the association between APOE genotype on accuracy and reaction times. RESULTS: There was no evidence of a genotype effect on accuracy when the two difficulty levels were examined separately. There was some evidence to support a deleterious effect of the ε4 allele on n-back accuracy in the multi-level regression. There was weak evidence that the ε22 group were less accurate but the numbers were very low in this group. The ε34 group had faster reaction times than the reference ε33 group in all adjusted analyses but the ε44 group were only faster in the 3-back condition in multi-level analyses. CONCLUSIONS: There was no evidence of benefit in ε4 carriers, but there was some evidence of a detrimental effect on working memory in this large study.
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spelling pubmed-45455852015-09-01 Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults Sinclair, Lindsey I. Button, Katherine S. Munafò, Marcus R. Day, Ian N. M. Lewis, Glyn PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Possession of the ε4 allele of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Early adult life effects of ε4 are less well understood. Working memory has been relatively little studied (compared to episodic memory) in relation to APOE genotype despite its importance in cognitive functioning. Our hypothesis was that ε4 would lead to an impairment in working memory in young adults. METHODS: We studied working memory using a computerised n-back task in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) at age 18. Data was available for 1049–1927 participants and for the 2- and 3-back versions of the task. Using multiple and multi-level regression controlling for important confounders we examined the association between APOE genotype on accuracy and reaction times. RESULTS: There was no evidence of a genotype effect on accuracy when the two difficulty levels were examined separately. There was some evidence to support a deleterious effect of the ε4 allele on n-back accuracy in the multi-level regression. There was weak evidence that the ε22 group were less accurate but the numbers were very low in this group. The ε34 group had faster reaction times than the reference ε33 group in all adjusted analyses but the ε44 group were only faster in the 3-back condition in multi-level analyses. CONCLUSIONS: There was no evidence of benefit in ε4 carriers, but there was some evidence of a detrimental effect on working memory in this large study. Public Library of Science 2015-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4545585/ /pubmed/26287823 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135894 Text en © 2015 Sinclair et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sinclair, Lindsey I.
Button, Katherine S.
Munafò, Marcus R.
Day, Ian N. M.
Lewis, Glyn
Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title_full Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title_fullStr Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title_full_unstemmed Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title_short Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults
title_sort possible association of apoe genotype with working memory in young adults
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545585/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26287823
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135894
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