Title:The Genetic Variation of ARRB2 is Associated with Late-onset Alzheimer's Disease in Han Chinese
VOLUME: 11 ISSUE: 4
Author(s):Teng Jiang, Jin-Tai Yu, Ying-Li Wang, Hui-Fu Wang, Wei Zhang, Nan Hu, Lin Tan, Lei Sun, Meng-Shan Tan, Xi-Chen Zhu and Lan Tan
Affiliation:Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, School of Medicine, Qingdao University, No. 5 Donghai Middle Road, Qingdao 266071, PR China.
Keywords:Alzheimer's disease, association, gene, polymorphism, β-arrestin 2, γ-secretase.
Abstract:Emerging evidence indicates that β-arrestin 2, an important regulator of G protein coupled receptors, is involved
in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The aim of this study was to investigate the association between
β-arrestin 2 gene (ARRB2) variation and the risk of late-onset AD (LOAD). A total of 1132 LOAD patients and 1158
healthy controls from the Han Chinese population were included in this study. Initially, four common single nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs3786047, rs16954146, rs1045280 and rs2271167) were selected by consulting the Han Chinese
from Beijing genotype data in HapMap database. Considering the fact that these four SNPs were located in one haplotype
block and any two of them were in almost complete linkage disequilibrium (D’=1, r2≥0.897), we chose rs1045280 (a coding-
synonymous variant) that covered all the common genetic variations in ARRB2 with r2≥0.8 as the tag SNP (tSNP) for
the subsequent genotyping. Our results showed that the minor allele of rs1045280 was associated with an increased
LOAD risk after adjusting for age, gender, educational level, and the apolipoprotein E (APOE) 4 status under dominant
(OR=1.291; 95% CI: 1.063-1.568; Bonferroni-corrected P=0.03) and additive (OR=1.269; 95% CI: 1.069-1.507; Bonferroni-
corrected P=0.018) models. Meanwhile, when these data were stratified by APOE ε4 status, this association was evident
only in APOE ε4 carriers (OR=1.617; 95% CI: 1.01-2.588; P=0.045). In summary, this study provide the first evidence
that the tSNP of ARRB2 significantly increases LOAD risk in Han Chinese, suggesting ARRB2 may represent a susceptibility
gene for LOAD.
