Lack of genetic association between TREM2 and Alzheimer's disease in East Asian population: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: Large-scale genome-wide association studies have identified TREM2 variants to be significantly associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in caucasian population. The goal of this systematic study and meta-analysis was to assess the association between Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) variants and AD in East Asian population.

METHODS

In this study, literatures were searched in PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library to screen citations from January 1990 to June 2014. Data analysis was done by using the Stata 12 software.

RESULTS

Twelve studies were considered for analysis. A total of 13 535 patients with AD and 22 976 healthy controls were studied. The results showed that rs75932628 variant was significantly associated with AD in caucasian population (P < .001, odds ratio ¼ 3.17, 95% confidence interval 2.45-4.09). However, the association was not found in East Asian population.

CONCLUSION

In our study, we found that TREM2 variant is likely not associated with AD in East Asian population.