APOE Genotype Effects On Functional Brain Networks Of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease(AD),the most common disease of dementia,is an insidious neurodegenerative disease associated with cognitive decline.Recent studies have suggested that AD is a continuous spectrum,including significant memory concern(SMC),mild cognitive impairment(MCI),and AD.Patients with AD can impose a serious burden on society and families.If early diagnosis and intervention can be carried out in pre-dementia,it will contribute to effective treatment of disease.In recent years,complex network researches based on graph theory have found abnormal changes in brain structure and functional network across AD spectrum,but the reasons for these changes are not clear.In studies on the pathogenesis of AD,ApoE ?4 genotype is considered to be an important susceptibility factor for the disease.Therefore,we can use the graph theory to explore the ApoE difference on functional brain network during the process of AD.And then,we can apply the difference characteristics to the diagnosis AD.This will provide new ideas for research of AD auxiliary diagnosis.Subjects were divided into Normal Control(NC),SMC,MCI and AD.And also patients can divide into non-carriers and carriers according to ApoE genotype.In this study,we used fMRI and graph theory to investigate the changes of functional brain network properties in ApoE non-carriers and carriers.This main work includes:(1)Functional brain networks were constructed based on the power-264 brain template.And functional topological properties based on the whole brain and subnetworks were calculated.(2)Exploring the changes of the whole brain functional properties under the influence of ApoE by using statistical analysis.(3)Exploring changes of the subnetwork properties of carriers and non-carriers.(4)Since education level can affect dementia,the researchers also explored the relationship between education and functional properties under the influence of ApoE.(5)In order to apply ApoE genotype to the diagnosis of AD,researchers extracted the classification characteristics of significant differences between two groups of AD spectrum with and without considering genotype.And SVM was used for classification to analyze the difference in classification accuracy under the influence of ApoE.The results showed that the classification accuracy was significantly improved after the subjects were refined according to ApoE genotype.In this study,we compared the functional brain network properties in non-carriers and carrier across the alzheimer's disease spectrum.Properties with significant differences were considered as classfied features to assistant diagnosis of the disease.In sum,there are differences between ApoE carriers and non-carriers in functional network attribute changes.If the influence of ApoE genotype can be considered in disease diagnosis,the classification accuracy will be improved.