Lack of association between angiotensin-converting enzyme and dementia of the Alzheimer’s type in an elderly Arab population in Wadi Ara, Israel

Abdalla Bowirrat^1,2,3, Jing Cui⁴, Kristin Waraska⁵, Robert P Friedland¹⁰, Marlene Oscar-Berman^2,3,6, Lindsay A Farrer^1,6,7,8,9, Amos Korczyn¹¹, Clinton T Baldwin^1,5,7

¹Genetic Program, ²Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, ³Division of Psychiatry, ⁴Hypertension Section, ⁵Center for Human Genetics, ⁶Department of Neurology, ⁷Department of Genetics and Genomics, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA; ⁸Department of Epidemiology, ⁹Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; ¹⁰Department of Neurology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA; ¹¹Department of Neurology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

Abstract: The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), a protease involved in blood pressure regulation, has been implicated as an important candidate gene for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study investigated whether the ACE gene insertion–deletion (ID) polymorphism is associated with risk of developing dementia of Alzheimer’s type (DAT) in an Arab–Israeli community, a unique genetic isolate where there is a high prevalence of DAT. In contrast to several other studies, we found no evidence of an association between this polymorphism and either DAT or age-related cognitive decline (ARCD).

Keywords: angiotensin-converting enzyme, dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, age-related cognitive decline, insertion–deletion polymorphism, Arab population