Alzgene Summary

This database is aimed at providing an unbiased, centralized, publicly available and regularly updated collection of genetic association studies performed on AD phenotypes. Data are extracted following systematic searches of publicly available scientific literature databases (NCBI's PubMed and ISI's Current Contents®), as well as the table of contents of journals in genetics, neurology and psychiatry. Extracted data include essential characteristics of the investigated populations (e.g. origin and ethnicity, sample sizes, onset ages, gender distribution) as well as gene-specific results and genotyping details. The only exception from sampling all available genetic association studies are the e2/e3/e4 polymorphisms in APOE - the only established AD risk gene - for which only a subset of studies is included. Only studies published in peer reviewed journals are considered for inclusion into the database. The database can be searched either by gene/protein name or alias, as well as by chromosomal location. Summary overviews for each gene include population specific information, as well as study-specific information (e.g. genotype distribution and allele frequencies, links to the polymorphisms studied, etc. Finally, a meta-analysis based on crude odds ratio (OR) estimates using up-to-date analytic methods is calculated from the available case-control association data for each gene.

Alzgene is searchable by chromosome, gene, protein, polymorphism, study or keyword. A standard entry gives a table with a published study (with citation) per line of the table, summarising key information such as population, source, number of polymorphisms studied, some summary data for the AD cases and controls and the overall result. It is also possible to comment on an individual report. Meta-analysis using the data presented for each gene is also possible. Results for a polymorphism search returns summary tables of allele frequencies grouped by ethnicity.

Return to Table 1.

  Related websites: Main HuGENet site | Greece Coordinating Centre | Canada Coordinating Centre