MedPage Today January 16, 2026
Researchers traced Alzheimer’s risk variants in largest study to date
Key Takeaways
- Superagers have the memory capacity of much younger people, but what drives this performance is unknown.
- This study found that the protective APOE2 allele occurred more frequently in superagers than in others.
- Superagers also had a lower frequency of the high-risk APOE4 allele compared with controls.
Superagers — adults 80 and older with the memory capacity of much younger people — had a higher frequency of gene variants that protected against Alzheimer’s disease and a lower frequency of genes considered harmful, data from eight cohorts showed.
The odds of having a protective APOE2 allele were 28% higher in superagers compared with same-age controls (OR 1.28, 95%...
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