Analysis of STMN2 CA repeats in italian ALS patients shows no association

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Recently, a polymorphic intronic CA repeat in STMN2 gene has been proposed as risk factor for ALS. The presence of long/long CA genotype, especially if one allele had 24 CA, was reported to be significantly associated with the disease in a cohort of sporadic ALS patients. We tested an Italian cohort of 366 ALS patients and 353 healthy controls and we found no association between CA length and ALS risk.