nstd127 (Dumanski et al. 2016)
- Organism:
- Human
- Study Type:
- Somatic
- Submitter:
- Chiara Rasi
- Description:
- Men have a shorter life expectancy compared with women but the underlying factor(s) are not clear. Late-onset, sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a common and lethal neurodegenerative disorder and many germline inherited variants have been found to influence the risk of developing AD. Our previous results show that a fundamentally different genetic variant, i.e. lifetime-acquired loss of chromosome Y (LOY) in blood cells, is associated with all-cause mortality, an increased risk of non-hematological tumors and that LOY could be induced by tobacco smoking. We tested here a hypothesis whether men with LOY are more susceptible to AD and show that LOY is associated with AD in three independent studies of different types. In a case-control study, males with AD diagnosis had higher degree of LOY mosaicism (adjusted odds ratio=2.80, p=0.0184, AD events=606). Furthermore, in two prospective studies men with LOY at blood sampling had greater risk for incident AD diagnosis during follow-up time (hazard ratio HR=6.80, 95% confidence interval (95% CI)=2.16-21.43, AD events=140, p=0.0011). Thus, LOY in blood is associated with risks of both AD and cancer, suggesting a role of LOY in blood cells on disease processes in other tissues, possibly via defective immunosurveillance. As a male-specific risk factor, LOY might explain why males on average live shorter lives than females. See Variant Summary counts for nstd127 in dbVar Variant Summary.
- Publication(s):
- Dumanski et al. 2016