International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease

Review Article

Function and Comorbidities of Apolipoprotein E in Alzheimer's Disease

Table 3

Summary of the most common neurodegenerative diseases of the CNS, some distinctive features, and their associations with the human APOE isoforms.


Neurodegenerative disease	Pathological and clinical characteristics			APOE isoform association
Neurodegenerative disease	Protein deposition	Dementia	Risk¹	Age at onset¹	Dementia	Severity/progression rate

AD	Extracellular amyloid-β (“SP”) NCI tau (“NFT”)	++	ε4 (dose effect)	ε4ε2 (dose effect)
PiD	NCI tau (“Pick Body”)	++	ε4(4/4<, 2/2>/-AD)	ε4 (dose effect)
CBD	GCI (+NCI) tau (“doughnut”)	++	ε4
PSP	GCI (+NCI) tau (“tuft”)	+	ε2
LBD	NCI α-synuclein (“non- classical LB”) (+ SP, + NFT)	++	ε4(4/4<, 2/2>/-AD)			ε4 survival
MSA	GCI (+NCI) α-synuclein (“Papp-Lantos Body”) (GCI + NCI tau)	(+)		ε4
PD	NCI α-synuclein (classical LB)	+	(ε4) ε2	ε4 (>ε3>ε2)	ε4
HD	Neuronal intranuclear huntingtin	+		ε4
ALS	(NCI TDP-43)	5% FTD	ε4	ε4ε2
MS			4/4			ε4 severity
ARMD	Extracellular amyloid-β (“drusen”)		ε4ε2	ε4ε2

AD: Alzheimer's disease; PiD: Pick’s disease; CBD: Corticobasal dementia; PSP: Progressive supranuclear palsy; LBD: Lewy body dementia; MSA, multiple system atrophy; PD: Parkinson's disease; HD: Huntington's disease; ALS: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; MS: Multiple sclerosis; ARMD: Age-related macular degeneration; NCI: neuronal cytoplasmic inclusion; GCI: glial cytoplasmic inclusion; SP: senile plaque; NFT: neurofibrillary tangle; LB: Lewy body; ++ indicates very present, + moderately present, (+) present in a subset; ¹the parentheses indicate that the association is less consistently found.