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Researchers have found abnormally low glucose metabolism in temporal lobes of young adult carriers of the ϵ4 allele of apolipoprotein E, a known high-risk allele for Alzheimer disease (see Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2004; 101:284). Because the earliest pathologic changes in Alzheimer disease occur in the entorhinal cortex, the current researchers performed an MRI study of this region in 239 healthy children (mean age at baseline, 11 years). Sixty-five children carried the ϵ4 risk allele, 29 carried the ϵ2 allele, which is considered protective, and 145 were ϵ3 homozygotes.
The authors repeated the MRIs over 6 years. More than 50% of the children had at least two scans 2 years apart (16% had 4 scans). For the most part, …