Genetic risk factors and candidate biomarkers for Alzheimer s disease

Alzheimer's disease is a multifactorial and progressive neurodegenerative disease, extremely diffused and with an increasing prevalence worldwide. There is an urgent need for biomarkers to diagnose AD early in its course. Furthermore, accurate biomarkers would be able to determine the clinical efficacy of novel neuroprotective strategies. Although the heritability of late-onset AD is high, our knowledge of the underlying putative susceptibility genes remains incomplete and the only unequivocally established late-onset AD gene is APOE. Nevertheless a number of susceptibility loci seems to influence the pathogenesis of AD, and variations in numerous genes have been considered to be important …