Preclinical memory profile in Alzheimer patients with and without allele APOE-epsilon4

To investigate the association between APOE-epsilon4 allele and memory phenotype in the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We compared an extensive preclinical memory profile at the baseline evaluation of 2 AD genotype groups: APOE-epsilon4 allele carriers and patients with APOE-epsilon3 homozygosity. Baseline memory performance was carried out at least 2 years (interval of 27.7 +/- 4 months) before AD diagnosis was established, and analysis included different modalities of working memory (visuoperceptive, visuospatial, digit span and processing speed), of declarative memory (recent, verbal learning, prospective and semantic) and of nondeclarative memory (procedural, incidental and priming). We found no significant differences: memory performance was similar in both genotype groups. The presence of the APOE-epsilon4 allele does not seem to be sufficient to cause a distinctive preclinical memory phenotype in AD patients. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel.