Lack of Association between the GPR3 Gene and the Risk for Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is the most frequent form of dementia and its incidence is rapidly increasing. Genetic factors are important determinants of the individual susceptibility to the disease and many efforts have been made to identify loci and markers involved. Recent finding describes the GPR3 gene as a modulator of β-amyloid production, suggesting that perturbation of its activity and function may contribute to the pathogenesis of AD. Furthermore, the gene is located at chromosome 1, in a region proposed as a susceptibility locus for the disease. We searched for nucleotide variations in the coding sequence and in the region 5 prime of it by dHPLC and analysed their distribution in a group of 104 AD patients and 109 age-matched controls. We identified 5 types of variation, two in the putative promoter region (g.27718954A>G and g.27719102A>T) and the others in exon 2 (c.51C>A, c.80C>G, and c.771C>T). All of them were equally represented in the two cohorts of the study, thus suggesting the absence of an association between GPR3 gene and AD in our population.