Familial hemiplegic migraine locus on 19p13 is involved in the common forms of migraine with and without aura

Migraine is a common neurological disease of two main types: migraine with aura and migraine without aura. Familial clustering suggests that genetic factors are involved in the etiology of migraine. Recently, a gene for familial hemiplegic migraine, a rare autosomal dominant subtype of migraine with aura, was mapped to chromosome 19p13. We tested the involvement of this chromosomal region in 28 unrelated families with the common forms of migraine with and without aura, by following the transmission of the highly informative marker D19S394. Sibpair analysis showed that affected sibs shared the same marker allele more frequently than expected by chance. Our findings thus also suggest the involvement of a gene on 19p13 in the etiology of the common forms of migraine

Cost-Effective Designs for Linkage Disequilibrium Mapping of Complex Traits

The current development of densely spaced collections of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) will lead to genomewide association studies for a wide range of diseases in many different populations. Determinations of the appropriate number of SNPs to genotype involve a balancing of power and cost. Several variables are important in these determinations. We show that there are different combinations of sample size and marker density that can be expected to achieve the same power. Within certain bounds, investigators can choose between designs with more subjects and fewer markers or those with more markers and fewer subjects. Which designs are more cost-effective depends on the cost of phenotyping versus the cost of genotyping. We show that, under the assumption of a set cost for genotyping, one can calculate a “threshold cost” for phenotyping; when phenotyping costs per subject are less than this threshold, designs with more subjects will be more cost-effective than designs with more markers. This framework for determining a cost-effective study will aid in the planning of studies, especially if there are choices to be made with respect to phenotyping methods or study populations

Melanocortin-1 Receptor Variant R151C Modifies Melanoma Risk in Dutch Families with Melanoma

Germline mutations of the cell-cycle regulator p16 (also called “CDKN2A”) in kindreds with melanoma implicate this gene in susceptibility to malignant melanoma. Most families with familial atypical multiple-mole melanoma (FAMMM) who are registered at the Leiden dermatology clinic share the same p16-inactivating deletion (p16-Leiden). Incomplete penetrance and variable clinical expression suggest risk modification by other genetic and/or environmental factors. Variants of the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene have been shown to be associated with red hair, fair skin, and melanoma in humans. Carriers of the p16-Leiden deletion in Dutch families with FAMMM show an increased risk of melanoma when they also carry MC1R variant alleles. The R151C variant is overrepresented in patients with melanoma who are from families with the p16-Leiden mutation. Although some of the effect of the R151C variant on melanoma risk may be attributable to its effect on skin type, our analyses indicate that the R151C variant contributes an increased melanoma risk even after statistical correction for its effect on skin type. These findings suggest that the R151C variant may be involved in melanoma tumorigenesis in a dual manner, both as a determinant of fair skin and as a component in an independent additional pathway

The gene for autosomal dominant spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA1) maps telomeric to the HLA complex and is closely linked to the D6S89 locus in three large kindreds

We studied three large kindreds with the HLA-linked form of spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA1) in order to localize the SCA1 locus on the short arm of chromosome 6 (6p). Two loci containing highly informative dinucleotide repeat sequences were used for linkage analysis. These two loci are D6S89, which is telomeric to the HLA region, and T complex-associated testes-expressed 1 (TCTE1), centromeric to HLA. Pairwise linkage analysis of SCA1 and D6S89 revealed a maximum lod score of 5.86 in the Houston SCA1 (HSCA1) kindred and of 8.08 in the Calabrian SCA1 (SCA1) kindreds, at recombination fractions of .050 and .022, respectively. A maximum pairwise lod score of 4.54 at a recombination frequency of .100 was obtained for SCA1 and TCTE1 in the HSCA1 kindred. No evidence for linkage was detected between TCTE1 and SCA1 in the CSCA1 kindreds. Multilocus linkage analysis of SCA1, HLA, and D6S89 in all three kindreds provided strong evidence for localization of the SCA1 locus telomeric to the HLA regions. However, multilocus linkage analysis of SCA1, HLA, and TCTE1 with HSCA1 family genotypes indicated the possibility of a location of the SCA1 locus centromeric to HLA. An analysis of HSCA1 recombinants in this region of chromosome 6 revealed relatively high recombination frequencies between HLA and each of the other two markers and relatively low frequencies between the latter and SCA1, predicting that the SCA1 locus would tend to segregate away from HLA together with D6S89 or TCTE1, as found with the three-point linkage analyses for this family. The results of the pairwise linkage analysis in HSCA1 and CSCA1 and of multilocus linkage analysis in the Calabrian kindreds support a single SCA1 locus telomeric to the HLA region on 6p