Cerebral Zinc Metabolism in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Most cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are sporadic, and overall estimates of lifetime risk of developing AD in first-degree relatives of probands with AD suggest that only ≈50% of AD cases are influenced by hereditary risk factors (1). Meanwhile, a relatively low concordance rate of 40% in monozygotic twins (2) implicates nongenetic factors in the expression of the disease. Therefore, environmental factors could have a major impact on the pathogenesis of AD. Several environmental factors have been proposed to influence the onset of AD. However, the study of the influence of a candidate stressor on the generation of hallmark pathology of AD has been a classic approach that initially implicat..