Objective To investigate the relationships between the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene polymorphisms and both the location and size of cerebral infarction.Methods A case-control study was chosen; 162 cerebral infarction patients,admitted to our hospital from September 2011 to November 2012,and 120 normal controls were chosen; their blood samples were detected by multiple polymerase chain reaction-ligase detection reaction (PCR-LDR) to analyze the ApoE gene polymorphisms.Its differences of genotype distribution or allele frequencies in different locations of cerebral infarction were analyzed,and the relationships between allele frequencies and volume of cerebral infarction was analyzed.Results No significant difference was found either in ApoE genotype distributions or allele frenquencies between the cerebral infarction patients and controls (P＞0.05); the ApoE genotype distributions or allele frenquencies showed no significant difference among patients having different locations of cerebral infarction (P＞0.05).A significant difference was observed in the average infarction volume between E4/X carriers (the E4/3 and E4/4 genotype combination,[15.7±2.3] cm3) and E3/3 carries ([10.2±2.1] cm3) and E2/X carriers (the E2/2 and E2/3 genotype combination,[9.5± 1.8] cm3,P＜ 0.05); and the ratio of massive cerebral infarction of E4/X carriers (56％) was significantly higher than E3/3 or E2/X carriers (26.3％,P＜0.05).Conclusions There is no correlation between ApoE genotype polymorphisms and cerebral infarction location; however it may be associated with infarction volume.The E4/X carriers are more prone to massive cerebral infarction,and its volume is larger than that of E2 and E3.