Why the study?
Do healthy young APOE ε4 carriers have different hippocampal volumes compared to APOE ε2 carriers?
Do healthy young APOE ε4 carriers have different hippocampal volumes compared to APOE ε2 carriers?
Healthy young APOE ε4 carriers exhibit smaller hippocampal volumes than ε2 carriers despite normal memory performance, suggesting early structural differences that may relate to later Alzheimer's disease risk.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Does not warrant clinical action in healthy young adults; leaves open whether early volume differences predict later Alzheimer's risk.
The apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele is the major genetic risk factor for the development of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), whereas the presence of the APOE ε2 allele seems to confer protection. Here, we report that healthy young APOE ε4 carriers have statistically significantly smaller hippocampal volumes than APOE ε2 carriers, while no differences were detected between the two groups in memory performance. The difference in hippocampal morphology is cognitively/clinically silent in young adulthood, but could render APOE ε4 carriers more prone to the later development of AD possibly due to lower reserve cognitive capacity.
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Alexopoulos et al. (2011) studied this question.
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