ArticleScientific reports2020
Short-term memory advantage for brief durations in human APOE ε4 carriers.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease is associated with loss of brain network segregation in midlife.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Genetic and functional evidence implicates amedRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Trends and challenges of AAV-delivered gene editing therapeutics for CNS disorders: Implications for neurodegenerative disease.Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids · 2025Review
- Hypothalamic volume, sleep, and APOE genotype in cognitively healthy adults.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Impact ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Apolipoprotein E epsilon4 allele is associated with better performance language and visual memory in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3.European journal of neurology · 2025Article
- Multifaceted roles of APOE in Alzheimer disease.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2024Review
- Dissociable effects of mild COVID-19 on short- and long-term memories.Brain communications · 2024Article
- Disrupted excitation-inhibition balance in cognitively normal individuals at risk of Alzheimer's disease.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The Relationship between Short- and Long-Term Memory Is Preserved across the Age Range.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Disrupted Excitation-Inhibition Balance in Cognitively Normal Individuals at Risk of Alzheimer's Disease.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2023Article
- APOE ε4 influences cognitive decline positively in APP and negatively in PSEN1 mutation carriers with autosomal-dominant Alzheimer's disease.European journal of neurology · 2022Article
- Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire scores and their relationship to visual short-term memory performance.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2022Article
- TheGenes · 2021Article
- Dissociable effects ofNature aging · 2021Article
- Superior short-term memory in APOE ε2 carriers across the age range.Behavioural brain research · 2021Article
- A meta-analysis of Alzheimer's disease's relationship with human ApoE gene variants.American journal of translational research · 2021Review
- Associations between APOE-, COMT Val108/158Met- and BDNF Val66Met polymorphisms and variations in depressive and anxiety symptoms, sense of coherence and vital exhaustion in the real-life setting of mandatory basic military training.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2021Article
- Memory precision of object-location binding is unimpaired inBrain communications · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The Apolipoprotein-E (APOE) ε4 gene allele, the highest known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, has paradoxically been well preserved in the human population. One possible explanation offered by evolutionary biology for survival of deleterious genes is antagonistic pleiotropy. This theory proposes that such genetic variants might confer an advantage, even earlier in life when humans are also reproductively fit. The results of some small-cohort studies have raised the possibility of such a pleiotropic effect for the ε4 allele in short-term memory (STM) but the findings have been inconsistent. Here, we tested STM performance in a large cohort of individuals (N = 1277); nine hundred and fifty-nine of which included carrier and non-carriers of the APOE ε4 gene, those at highest risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. We first confirm that this task is sensitive to subtle deterioration in memory performance across ageing. Importantly, individuals carrying the APOE ε4 gene actually exhibited a significant memory advantage across all ages, specifically for brief retention periods but crucially not for longer durations. Together, these findings present the strongest evidence to date for a gene having an antagonistic pleiotropy effect on human cognitive function across a wide age range, and hence provide an explanation for the survival of the APOE ε4 allele in the gene pool.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.