No association between cytokine gene polymorphism and risk of Alzheimer's disease in Slovaks

Clinical and immunopathological evidence support a potential role of inflammatory cytokines in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, studies examining the association between cytokine gene polymorphisms and risk of developing AD yielded conflicting results. The objective of our study was to evaluate the association between the functional polymorphisms in the TNF-alpha, TGF-beta 1, IL-10, IL-6 and IFN gamma genes, respectively and the risk of AD in Slovak individuals. Fifty sporadic AD patients and 140 non-demented age-matched control subjects were genotyped in our case-control study. The observed allele and genotype frequencies in AD patients and controls did not reveal any statistically significant differences. In conclusion, our data suggest that there is no involvement of cytokine gene genetic variance in the development of AD in the Slovak population.