The levels of somatostatin are consistently decreased in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. The somatostatin gene is located on chromosome 3q27.3 close to an association region identified in late-onset AD patients originating from Finland. Since somatostatin is a good candidate on both positional and functional grounds, we studied whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the somatostatin gene were associated with AD in the Finnish population. We genotyped three SNPs within this gene in Finnish AD patients (n = 424) and non-demented controls (n = 466). AD patients were compared with non-demented control subjects using single-locus and haplotype approaches. In the whole study group, the age, sex and APOE adjusted OR for the risk of AD in C-allele carriers of the SNP rs4988 514 was 1.42 (p