Low prevalence of APP duplications in Swedish and Finnish patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Familial early-onset Alzheimer's disease with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (EOAD/CAA) was recently associated with duplications of the gene for the amyloid-beta precursor protein (APP). In this study, we have screened for duplications of APP in patients with EOAD from Sweden and Finland. Seventy-five individuals from families with EOAD and 66 individuals with EOAD without known familial inheritance were screened by quantitative PCR. On the basis of the initial results, a portion of the samples was also investigated with quantitative multiplex PCR. No duplications of APP were identified, whereby we conclude that this is not a common cause of EOAD in the Swedish and Finnish populations, at least not in our collection of families and cases.