Van Den Heuvel Corinna, Thornton Emma, Vink Robert
Discipline of Pathology, University of Adelaide, Centre for Neurological Diseases, The Hanson Institute, Adelaide, Australia.
Prog Brain Res. 2007;161:303-16. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(06)61021-2.
In an effort to identify the factors that are involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), epidemiological studies have featured prominently in contemporary research. Of those epidemiological factors, accumulating evidence implicates traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a possible predisposing factor in AD development. Exactly how TBI triggers the neurodegenerative cascade of events in AD remains controversial. There has been extensive research directed towards understanding the potential relationship between TBI and AD and the putative influence that apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype has on this relationship. The aim of the current paper is to provide a critical summary of the experimental and human studies regarding the association between TBI, AD and APOE genotype. It will be shown that despite significant discrepancies in the literature, there still appears to be an increasing trend to support the hypothesis that TBI is a potential risk factor for AD. Furthermore, although it is known that APOE genotype plays an important role in AD, its link to a deleterious outcome following TBI remains inconclusive and ambiguous.
为了确定与阿尔茨海默病（AD）发病机制相关的因素，流行病学研究在当代研究中占据了显著地位。在这些流行病学因素中，越来越多的证据表明创伤性脑损伤（TBI）可能是AD发病的一个易感因素。TBI究竟如何引发AD中的神经退行性事件级联反应仍存在争议。针对理解TBI与AD之间的潜在关系以及载脂蛋白E（APOE）基因型对这种关系的假定影响，已经进行了广泛的研究。本文的目的是对关于TBI、AD和APOE基因型之间关联的实验研究和人体研究进行批判性总结。结果将表明，尽管文献中存在显著差异，但似乎仍有越来越多的趋势支持TBI是AD潜在危险因素这一假说。此外，虽然已知APOE基因型在AD中起重要作用，但其与TBI后不良后果的联系仍不明确且模棱两可。
