British scientists began the largest investigation yet into how genes influence Alzheimer’s disease yesterday.

A research team at Cardiff University has received £1.3 million from the Wellcome Trust to conduct the first genetic survey using a new technique which identifies how inheritance can predispose sufferers to the disease.

DNA from 6,000 people with late-onset Alzheimer’s will be compared with samples taken from 8,000 healthy controls to reveal common variations that are linked to a higher risk of developing the condition. It will use new technology that allows scientists to screen hundreds of thousands of genes at once. Previous methods were capable of identifying genes that affect disease only if they had large effects, such as the ApoE e4 variant that raises the chances of developing Alzheimer’s by up to ten times. The new genome-wide association studies can pick up much smaller effects.

Professor Julie Williams said: “Alzheimer’s is genetically complicated, so we need large sample sizes to make sure any genetic links that we find are not mere coincidence.”

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