rs17070145

This study examined how aging and the KIBRA rs17070145 polymorphism affect spatial memory processes in a virtual navigation task (N=152). Older adults showed better learning with landmark-related spatial information compared to younger adults, who relied more on boundary information. Among older adults, T-allele carriers of KIBRA rs17070145 demonstrated significantly better spatial learning performance compared to C homozygotes (mean cumulative distance error: 2995 vm vs 3856 vm, P=0.003), but this effect was not observed in younger adults.

Study of 152 adults (77 older, 75 younger) examined effects of KIBRA SNP rs17070145 on spatial navigation in virtual reality. Older adults performed worse overall, and among older adults, T-allele carriers showed better spatial learning performance than C/C homozygotes (mean error 2995 vm vs 3856 vm, p=0.003). Older adults relied more on landmark-based navigation while younger adults relied more on boundary-based cues.

This study failed to replicate the previously reported association between the Kibra polymorphism rs17070145 and human memory performance. Testing two large European cohorts (Duke: n=319; German: n=365) with multiple memory tasks including the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), the authors found no significant associations with rs17070145 or 39-79 tagging SNPs in the Kibra gene, despite adequate statistical power to detect effect sizes >1.7%.