A new era of genome-wide association studies in the field of Alzheimer’s disease and overlapping co-pathologies: lessons learned from a neuropathology-centered approach

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and overlapping pathologies represent a growing worldwide health concern. With the first disease-modifying treatments on the rise, it becomes increasingly important to move research in this area forward. Genetic research is excellent at discovering novel contributors to disease mechanisms, which has been demonstrated by the discovery of over 75 disease loci associated with AD. However, classical large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) use cohorts of individuals that have been assigned a case or a control status based on a clinical diagnosis. For AD, this can result in bias due to the complex nature of the disease profile. More specifically, on the neuropathological level, AD is multifaceted with co-morbid pathological lesions being the norm rather than the exception. Together with the substantial preclinical phase, this can lead to the introduction of type I and type II errors. An alternative to using large-scale clinical cohorts is to shift toward studying individuals where the disease diagnosis has been neuropathologically confirmed, or cohorts where an endophenotype is used which can directly reflect ongoing pathological processes in vivo. Such endophenotypes could entail biofluid or imaging-based biomarkers, but the most undiluted signal is obtained when employing neuropathological data. These data typically represent the presence or absence of a lesion or reflects the semi-quantitative burden of pathological features. Here, we review what this shift toward more detailed phenotypes has already contributed to the field by investigating the genetic background of AD hallmark lesions as well as commonly observed co-pathologies.