To compare our findings to a genetic variant with known association with neurodegenerative diseases and aging, we made similar analysis with the frequencies of APOE ε4 allele, which showed a highly significant decrease with age ( p = 3 × 10 −43 ).
Rs2814707 heterozygote frequency decreased also with age and the difference between oldest and youngest group was nominally significant ( p = 0.014) but did not survive Bonferroni correction ( Table 1 ).
The rs139185008*C heterozygote frequency decreased with age and the difference was statistically significant between the oldest and middle age group (2-sided p = 0.037) but, likely due to smaller number of individuals, only borderline significant in oldest vs. youngest age group (2-sided p = 0.061) ( Table 1 ).
Again, the rs139185008*C heterozygote frequency decreased with age ( Figure 3 ), showed overlapping effect size with the results in discovery cohort but did not reach statistical significance ( p = 0.38, beta = −0.10, standard error = 0.12).