LOW APOLIPOPROTEIN-E EPSILON-4 ALLELE FREQUENCY IN THE POPULATION OF CATALONIA (SPAIN) DETERMINED BY PCR-RFLP AND LASER FLUORESCENT SEQUENCER

Specific apolipoprotein E alleles have been associated in the last few years with several diseases using appropriate controls, However, thes e control groups are rarely representative of the general population s ince they correspond either to aged or healthy control groups (and thu s depleted of pathological alleles). For this reason it is difficult a t present to compare population allelic frequencies in different count ries. In order to provide this essential basic data representative of the general population, in this work we have determined the distributi on of apolipoprotein E alleles in 226 individuals from the population of Catalonia (Spain) sampled with the main purpose of paternity testin g. The allelic frequencies are: epsilon 2 = 0.064, epsilon 3 = 0.810 a nd epsilon 4 = 0.126, predicting a lower incidence of Alzheimer diseas e and possibly also of other pathologies where this allele is a risk f actor.