Association of aBACE1Gene Polymorphism with Parkinson’s Disease in a Norwegian Population
Background. Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) share pathological features, including amyloid-beta pathology. Amyloid-beta peptide is generated by sequential proteolysis of amyloid precursor protein (APP), and genetic variations in the processing pathway genes have been found to increase the risk of AD; however, the contribution in PD is unknown.Methods. The aim of this study was to investigate whether candidate polymorphisms in five genes (ADAM10,BACE1,BACE2,PSEN2, andCLU) involved in the APP processing pathway affect PD risk in a population-based cohort of patients with incident PD and control subjects from the Norwegian ParkWest study.Results. We found an association of rs638405 inBACE1with increased risk of PD, thus providing a novel link, at the genetic level, between amyloid-beta pathology and PD.