Apolipoprotein E Genotypic Frequencies Among Down Syndrome Patients Imply Early Unsuccessful Aging for ApoE4 Carriers

Down syndrome (DS) might be considered a model for unsuccessful and early aging, possibly accelerated for those who carry the APOE4 allele associated with common age-related diseases, e.g., Alzheimer's disease and a poor prognosis after acute myocardial infarction, causing lower ApoE4 frequencies among the very old in general populations. We compared ApoE genotypic frequencies found for healthy adults (n = 211, age 90) to those found for DS patients (n = 106, mean age 9 years), all living in western Sicily. We found that the frequency of the ApoE23 genotype increased with age among the healthy adults (8.5%, 6.4%, 19.7%; p = 0.024) while ApoE34 frequency decreased (16.1%, 12.6%, 4.1%; p = 0.…