Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract Background In previous studies, Alzheimer's disease (AD) has consistently been linked to aging, and some recent reports have suggested an inverse relationship between the risk of AD and the risk of cancer, although the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Methods Epidemiological meta-analysis was performed to determine whether AD patients were less likely to develop cancer and whether cancer patients were less likely to develop AD. And we analyzed associations of APOE expression, an AD risk gene, with anti-tumor immune signatures, tumor immunity related molecular and genomic features, and clinical features in 33 TCGA cancer types. Results Our project showed that people with AD are epidemiologically less likely to develop cancer than individuals without AD (RR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.40, 0.70), and similarly, cancer patients are less likely to develop AD than non-cancer patients (RR: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.45, 0.83). And then APOE expression had significant positive correlations with the enrichment scores of anti-tumor immune signatures in most cancer types (P ρ > 0). Similarly, we found that cancer patients with high APOE expression had a higher proportion of early-stage (Stage I-II) tumors (P APOE gene of which acts as a risk factor for AD but also has anti-tumor activity, and offers novel perspectives on the diagnosis and treatment of both afflictions.
Gui et al. (Thu,) studied this question.