1996 Articles

A Preliminary Study of Apolipoprotein E Genotype and Psychiatric Manifestations of Alzheimer's Disease

Ramachandran, Gayatri; Marder, Karen; Tang, Mingxin; Schofield, Peter R. W.; Chun, Michael R.; Devanand, Devangere P.; Stern, Yaakov; Mayeux, Richard Paul

We evaluated the frequency of depression and psychosis in 46 patients with AD and 135 control subjects with the apolipoprotein (APO) E3/3 or E3/4 genotype. Patients with AD and the APOE3/4 genotype had a more than threefold increase in the signs of depression and psychosis when compared with either patients with the APOE3/3 genotype or to control subjects. Our preliminary study suggests that the phenotype of AD associated with the epsilon 4 allele is more likely to include psychiatric manifestations.