This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

What a Study of Epilepsy Can Tell Us About Linkage Strategy for Psychiatric Disease

David A. Greenberg, MD, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1992;49(9):745-750.

Abstract
• The most popular strategy for finding genes in psychiatric diseases has been to focus on large pedigrees with many affected members. While this strategy has sound advantages, it also has drawbacks that have seldom been addressed. The strategy of using smaller families also has its place in a linkage analysis. To illustrate the point, I discuss herein the successful search for a gene for another common complex disease, namely, idiopathic primary generalized epilepsy. There, investigators in the Los Angeles (Calif) Epilepsy Program used mostly nuclear families who were chosen through a proband with highly specific characteristics. An independent study, using a different strategy but one still focused on small families, then confirmed the linkage. However, investigators of both epilepsy projects put much care into determining which clinical characteristics would be used to define the index cases. The implications for the study of psychiatric disease are as follows: (1) careful attention must be paid to clinical presentation, and (2) there is room for both large-pedigree and smallfamily strategies in designing linkage studies.

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication April 2, 1992.

Reprint requests to Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Medical Center, One Gustave L. Levy PI, New York, NY 10029-6574 (Dr Greenberg).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Genetic dissection of myocilin glaucoma
Gong et al.
Hum Mol Genet 2004;13:R91-102.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Phenotypic features of familial febrile seizures: Case-control study
Pal et al.
Neurology 2003;60:410-414.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Is Schizophrenia Linked to Chromosome 1q?
Macgregor et al.
Science 2002;298:2277a-2277.
FULL TEXT  

Discovery of Cancer Susceptibility Genes: Study Designs, Analytic Approaches, and Trends in Technology
Schaid et al.
J Natl Cancer Inst Monogr 1999;1999:1-16.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

An 8-Year Follow-up of 450 Sons of Alcoholic and Control Subjects
Schuckit and Smith
Arch Gen Psychiatry 1996;53:202-210.
ABSTRACT