The effect of Visfatin -948 G-T polymorphism in predisposition for Alzheimer?s Disease

Alzheimer?s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in elderly. It is characterized by progressive deterioration of cognitive functions. In clinical practice, current criteria for diagnosis of AD are still largely based on the exclusion of secondary causes and other dementive disorders. Eary diagnosis and treatment at early stages are very important at AD for the efficacy of treatment. Pointing out a possible predisposition will be helpful for taking precautions against AD. In our study, we examined the effect of Visfatin -948 G-T polymorphism as a predisposition for AD.In the present study, 40 AD patients and 40 healthy control subjects were included. AD patients were selected consecutively from Dementia outpatient clinic in Dokuz Eylül University, Department of Neurology between the dates of 20.06.2009-20.03.2010. Control cases were selected from the healthy elderly volunteer persons with similar demographic features. We studied -948 G-T polymorphism from AD patients and healty controls peripheric blood samples with real-time PCR using allel specific primer and melting curve analysis. Beside -948 G-T polymorphism we investigated serum fasting glucose levels (FGL) , LDL, HDL, triglyceride, total cholesterol and C-Reactive Protein (CRP). All the patients and controls also were examined with the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Benton Facial Recognition Test and Category Naming Test.There were no significant difference between patients and healthy cases for -948 G-T polymorphism.According to our experiment group, we show that the -948 G-T polymorphism does not cause predisposition for AD. Future studies with larger numbers of patients and controls are necessary to clarify exact role of Visfatin in AD pathogenesis.