Associations of WWC1 variants with Alzheimer?s disease and vascular dementia among rural older adults in China: A population-based study

We sought to examine the associations of common WWC1 variants with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) among rural-dwelling older adults in China. This population-based study used data from the baseline assessments (March -September 2018) of MIND-China. AD and VaD were diag-nosed following the international criteria. Of the 5455 participants (age >= 60 years, 57.27% women), 182 were diagnosed with AD and 88 with VaD. Logistic regression analysis suggested that WWC1 rs17070145 C allele (vs. T) was associated with multivariable-adjusted odds ratio of 1.23 (95% confidence interval 0.96-1.58) for AD, and that CC genotype (vs. TT) was associated with multivariable-adjusted odds ratio of 2.19(1.10-4.39) for VaD, but the association with VaD became non-significant when further adjusting for stroke history. Furthermore, exonic SNPs rs3822660 and rs3822659 were in strong linkage disequilib-rium (LD) with rs17070145 (D' = 0.88). These results suggest that the strong LD between rs17070145 and 2 exonic SNPs may explain the association of WWC1 rs17070145 C allele with AD and that stroke may partly explain the association of WWC1 rs17070145 CC genotype with VaD. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )

Automated summary

We investigated the relationship between common WWC1 variants and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) in rural older adults in China. Our population-based study utilized data from the baseline assessments of MIND-China. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the C allele of WWC1 rs17070145 was associated with an increased risk of AD, while the CC genotype was associated with an increased risk of VaD, but this association became non-significant when adjusting for stroke history. Additionally, two exonic SNPs, rs3822660 and rs3822659, were found to be in strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) with rs17070145.