Largest meta-analysis of (proxy) Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and is expected to bring along large medical and economic problems with the aging of the worldwide population. To improve the current treatment of AD we require an advanced understanding of underlying biological mechanisms that are involved in the initiation of pathological processes leading to clinical AD. Genetics might shed important light on this subject, as it allows to objectively (without assumptions about underlying functional mechanisms involved in the disease) obtain novel knowledge on the biological origin of the disease, and enable development of prediction/stratification tools for early interventions (before degeneration is manifest). 
Genetic discoveries in complex diseases (like AD) require very large sample sizes. This in turn requires the collaborative efforts and careful analysis of many samples. As part of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, we published our first study in Nature Genetics (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0311-9) last year with the AD working group (PGC-ALZ). To discover more novel genetic factors for AD we will perform a second wave of PGC-ALZ genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis of a substantial larger set of samples, by collaboration with new research groups who contribute with new samples.