Analysis of association between Alzheimer disease and the K variant of butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE-K)

Butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE) is an enzyme expressed in most human tissues. Recently, an increased odds of carrying the K variant of BCHE (BCHE-K) was reported among Alzheimer disease (AD) cases as compared with controls. We tested our data set of 245 sporadic AD cases and 241 controls for an association between BCHE-K, APOE4, and AD using logistic regression and chi-square analyses. The sib transmission disequilibrium test (S-TDT) was also used to test for differences in BCHE-K allele frequencies between 163 discordant sib-pairs selected from multiplex AD families. No statistically significant differences were noted between BCHE-K case and control allele frequencies even after stratifying by APOE4 status. S-TDT analysis between the BCHE-K variant and AD was also not significant (P = 0.52). We conclude that BCHE-K is not a major genetic risk factor for AD in our study population. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.