Objective To examine whether the KLOTHO gene variant KL-VS attenuates APOE4-associated beta-amyloid (A beta) accumulation in a late-middle-aged cohort enriched with Alzheimer disease (AD) risk factors. Three hundred nine late-middle-aged adults from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention and the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center were genotyped to determine KL-VS and APOE4 status and underwent CSF sampling (n = 238) and/or 11C-Pittsburgh compound B (PiB)-PET imaging (n = 183). Covariate-adjusted regression analyses were used to investigate whether APOE4 exerted expected effects on A beta burden. Follow-up regression analyses stratified by KL-VS genotype (i.e., noncarrier vs heterozygous; there were no homozygous individuals) evaluated whether the influence of APOE4 on A beta was different among KL-VS heterozygotes compared to noncarriers. APOE4 carriers exhibited greater A beta burden than APOE4-negative participants. This effect was stronger in CSF (t = -5.12, p < 0.001) compared with PiB-PET (t = 3.93, p < 0.001). In the stratified analyses, this APOE4 effect on A beta load was recapitulated among KL-VS noncarriers (CSF: t = -5.09, p < 0.001; PiB-PET: t = 3.77, p < 0.001). In contrast, among KL-VS heterozygotes, APOE4-positive individuals did not exhibit higher A beta burden than APOE4-negative individuals (CSF: t = -1.03, p = 0.308; PiB-PET: t = 0.92, p = 0.363). These differential APOE4 effects remained after KL-VS heterozygotes and noncarriers were matched on age and sex. In a cohort of at-risk late-middle-aged adults, KL-VS heterozygosity was associated with an abatement of APOE4-associated A beta aggregation, suggesting KL-VS heterozygosity confers protections against APOE4-linked pathways to disease onset in AD.
