Page 60 - Annual Report 2018

lacking anticoagulant to obtain serum are proces- risk, other possible genetic susceptibility genes have
sed. also been analyzed in a subset of participants (see
below).
The type of primary aliquots that are obtained in du-
plicate are the following: It is also important to emphasize that the samples ob-
tained from Vallecas Project volunteers aged bet-
• Whole blood (ST, for its acronym in Spanish) ween 70 and 85 years (at the baseline evaluation)
• Platelets-rich plasma (PRP) that include a comprehensive assessment of cogni-
• Platelets-free plasma (PFP) tive, sociological and neuroimaging state are opti-
• Buffy Coat (BC)
• Red blood cells (RBC) mal for its use as a control population in various
• Serum (Suero, in Spanish) projects related to neurodegenerative diseases, es-
• Mononucleate leukocytes (LM, for its pecially Alzheimer's disease. The monitoring for a pe-
acronym in Spanish) riod of 5 years will allow us to detect early, even
before clinical symptoms manifestation, susceptibi-
Genomic DNA was extracted from whole blood of lity factors and biomarkers associated with Alzhei-
all participants who have signed informed consent mer's disease.
to it and the APOE gene, an important marker of ge-
netic risk for Alzheimer's disease, was analyzed. The Research Program of the Queen Sofia Foundation
comparison of the frequency of APOE allele 4 ca- Alzheimer Center
rriers between CAFRS patients and Vallecas Project
volunteers confirms the risk to suffer from Alzheimer's This program focuses on regular and protocol-based
disease with an OR = 3.53 (p <0.001). In addition, in monitoring of a cohort of CAFRS patients with de-
order to define different subpopulations of genetic mentia, ether as residents at the Center or atten-

Within the Molecular Genetics department, the activity of the
Vallecas Project is shown in the table on the following page:

Evaluation 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th TOTAL

Nº samples 1,169 767 755 699 618 249 0 0 4,257

2018 samples 0 0 0 0 44 165 172 7 388

Total 1,169 767 755 699 662 414 172 7 4,645

Nº Aliquots 16,366 10,738 10,570 9,786 9,268 5,796 2,408 98 65,030

CIEN Foundation Annual Report 2018 / 60