title: Increased risk of dementia in mothers of Alzheimer's disease cases: evidence for maternal inheritance.
abstract: This study tests the hypothesis of maternal inheritance of AD in families of 118 subjects with this disorder enrolled in The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD). The parental generation included 24 subjects with dementia. Using the Cox proportional hazards model, we found the age-adjusted mother-to-father relative risk to be 2.8 (95% CI, 1.1 to 7.7). Among a subset of 10 families with one affected parent and at least two affected siblings, the ratio of affected mothers-to-fathers was 9:1. These findings support recent studies that found a high mother-to-father ratio among affected parents of subjects with AD. Together, these results suggest maternal inheritance of AD and are consistent with several hypotheses regarding the genetic nature of AD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health, University of Washington, Seattle 98105, USA.
authors.forename: S D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Edland
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Silverman
authors.forename: E R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Peskind
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tsuang
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wijsman
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009035:Mothers; D012307:Risk Factors; D016019:Survival Analysis