Tau polymorphisms are not associated with Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of a number of neurodegenerative conditions including frontotemporal dementia and progressive supranuclear palsy that are associated with abnormal tall protein aggregates in neurons. Mutations in the tau gene cause familial forms of frontotemporal dementia and alleles of the tau gene have been associated with risk for progressive supranuclea r palsy. However, studies evaluating whether polymorphic variation in tau i s associated with AD have produced conflicting results. We investigated the role of the tau exon 2 polymorphism in a large sam pie of AD cases and con trols and found no evidence that polymorphic variation in tau is associated AD. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.