Relationship of apolipoprotein E and age at onset to Parkinson disease neuropathology

Previous studies investigating the association between apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotypes and Parkinson disease (PD) have yielded conflicting results, and only a few have addressed APOE as a possible determinant of PD pathology. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the relationship between APOE and PD as well as APOE and PD pathology. We studied 108 pathologically verified patients with PD and 108 controls pair-matched for age and gender. Allele frequencies of APOE differed between patients with PD and controls (p = 0.02). The frequency of epsilon 4 allele increased (p = 0.01), whereas that of epsilon 3 allele decreased with advancing PD pathology (p = 0.002). Only age of PD onset was an independent predictor for the rate of progression of PD pathology in which late-onset patients appeared to reach end point PD pathology more rapidly than early-onset patients (p = 0.001). In conclusion, our findings suggest that APOE may express its effect on the risk of PD by modifying the occurrence of PD pathology, but age of PD onset seems to be the principal determinant of the progression rate of PD pathology.