Environmental and Genetic Risk Factors for Alzheimer's Disease in Spain

Alzheimer's disease is a complex neurodegenerative disorder of unknown aetiology, and an important number of cases are sporadic. To date, only some of the genetic and environmental risk factors for Alzheimer's disease have been identified. It is very important to understand the role of environmental and genetic risk factors in Alzheimer's disease in order to develop therapeutic strategies. For sporadic cases of Alzheimer's disease, many environmental and genetic risk factor modifiers have been described, but – with a few exceptions – most of them remain controversial. In this article we review some studies of these risk factors in a Spanish population to identify a few directives for future studies.