Genome-Wide Association Study of Brain Connectivity Changes for Alzheimer's Disease

Variations in the human genome have been found in the literature to be an essential factor that affects the susceptibility of Alzheimer9s disease (AD). Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic loci that significantly contribute to the risk of AD. The availability of the genetic data, coupled with brain images technologies leaving rooms for more opportunities and allows further study designs. Although methods have been proposed towards integrating imaging and genetic information, the statistical power remains a primary challenge preventing the production of replicable associations. Moreover, for such kind of studies, the measurement of disease is often taken at a single time point, therefore, not allowing the disease progression to be taken into consideration. In longitudinal settings, we analysed a DTI and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) datasets obtained from Alzheimer9s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), by conducting a GWAS on the global network metrics absolute change, after which we used the GWAS summary statistics to compute the gene scores. We observed significant associations between the change in the AD brain and genes which reported to manipulate AD susceptibility, brain structure and function.