Foroughan M, Farahani ZG, Shariatpanahi M, Vaezinejad M, Kamerani AA, Sheikhvatan M. Risk factors of Alzheimer's disease among Iranian population. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2008 Feb;5(1):70-2.

BACKGROUND: Several demographic, environmental and clinical risk factors have been determined as possible risk/protective factors of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The purpose of this study was to find out which one of these known factors is related to developing of AD in Iranian population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a case-control study, 115 elderly patients (mean age of 70+/-8.18 years) with DSM-IV based final diagnosis compared with 115 non-demented counterparts matched for age, sex, and socioeconomic status regarding lifestyle, family history, and history of bio-psychosocial health. RESULTS: All differences between the two groups were non-significant except for history of hypertension (P=0.018) which was most prevalent in AD group. Risk of the incident AD for the hypertensive group was 1.71 (1.08-2.70) compared to the non-hypertensive group. CONCLUSION: These results confirm the previously reported relationship between AD and vascular factors. Prevention, early detection, and treatment of hypertension may have some implications in the primary and secondary prevention of AD.

Raygani AV, Zahrai M, Raygani AV, Doosti M, Javadi E, Rezaei M, Pourmotabbed T. Association between apolipoprotein E polymorphism and Alzheimer disease in Tehran, Iran. Neurosci Lett. 2005 Feb 25;375(1):1-6.

Epsilon 4 allele of apolipoprotein E (APOE-epsilon4) is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). The association of APOE allele frequencies with AD remains unknown in developing countries. We examined the frequency of APOE alleles in 105 patients with AD and 129 cognitively normal subjects of similar age and sex (control group), in Tehran, Iran. The APOE-epsilon4 allele frequency was significantly higher in the AD subjects than in the control group (21% versus 6.2%, p < 0.001). In addition, the OR for APOE-epsilon4 heterozygous and homozygous subjects were 3.2 (p = 0.001) and 12.75 (p = 0.01), respectively. The OR was not uniform across age groups. The AD subjects carrying one or two APOE-epsilon4 allele showed earlier age-at-onset (p < 0.001). These data suggest that the APOE-epsilon4 allele increase the risk for AD in Tehran population in a dose and age-dependent manner. Although the APOE-epsilon2 allele frequency was lower in the AD subjects than in the control group (0.95% versus 2.7%, p = 0.15), APOE-epsilon2 was not associated with the onset of AD in Tehran's population. The OR for epsilon2 allele in AD subjects was 0.34 (p = 0.21). The genotype frequencies for epsilon3, epsilon4, and epsilon2 alleles in control subjects were 91.2, 6.1, and 2.7%, respectively. These values were similar to that reported for Turkish, Greece, Japanese, Spanish, and Moroccan populations, but they were significantly different from the reported values for the other ethnic populations. This observation emphasizes the importance of geographical location and ethnical background of the subjects in the study of APOE genotypes and their association with AD.