Familial Nature of Alzheimer's Disease

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Abstract
To the Editor: Dr. Prusiner's recent note on prions, amyloid, and Alzheimer's disease (March 8 issue)1 asserts that "most cases of Alzheimer's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are sporadic, but about 10 to 15 per cent are familial. The familial cases exhibit an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance with variable penetrance."We believe Dr. Prusiner has substantially underestimated the importance of heredofamilial factors in Alzheimer's disease. In keeping with other evidence on familial aggregation in this disease,2 3 4 our recent study5 found that 78 per cent of Alzheimer's disease cases in nursing homes involved the specific clinical features, aphasia or apraxia, that identified . . .

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