A Preliminary Study on Rapid Quantitative and Qualitative Detection Methods for Apolipoprotein E4 in Plasma

Objective: The APOE {varepsilon}4 genotype is the known most significant risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the association between the blood levels of its encoded apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE4) and AD is poorly understood. Methods: We developed a chemiluminescent quantitative assay and a colloidal gold lateral chromatography qualitative assay to detect ApoE4 protein in plasma samples and compared the results with conventional genotyping. Results: In 185 samples, the plasma ApoE4 protein levels in non-{varepsilon}4 carriers ({varepsilon}2/{varepsilon}3 and {varepsilon}3/{varepsilon}3) were 0.07 +/- 0.23 and 0.05 +/- 0.17 g /mL, respectively; while the levels in {varepsilon}4 c