Genetics of panic disorder on the Faroe Islands: a replication study of chromosome 9 and panic disorder.

Objective: The population of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean is likely to have the same ancestry as the Icelandic population. An Icelandic study on Panic Disorder has found some evidence for a loci on chromosome 9.

Methods: On the Faroe Islands we have an ongoing genetic project concerning panic disorder among other psychiatric disorders.

Association of schizophrenia and autoimmune diseases: linkage of Danish national registers.

Objective: Individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives tend to have either higher or lower than expected prevalences of autoimmune disorders, especially rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, autoimmune thyroid diseases, and type 1 diabetes. The purpose of the study was to estimate the association of schizophrenia with these disorders as well as a range of other autoimmune diseases in a single large epidemiologic study.

Method: The Danish Psychiatric Register, the National Patient Register, and a register with socioeconomic information were linked to form a data file that included all 7,704 persons in Denmark diagnosed with schizophrenia from 1981 to 1998 and their parents along with a sample of matched comparison subjects and their parents.

Candidate psychiatric illness genes identified in patients with pericentric inversions of chromosome 18.

Both the long and short arms of chromosome 18 have been consistently identified as potential locations for schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder susceptibility genes. We previously described the identification of two independent pericentric inversions of chromosome 18 [inv(18)(p11.31;q21.

The origin of the isolated population of the Faroe Islands investigated using Y chromosomal markers.

Historical, archaeological and linguistic sources suggest that the ancestors of the present day population in the Faroe Islands may have their origin in several different regions surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean. In this study we use binary and microsatellite markers of the Y chromosome to analyse genetic diversity in the Faroese population and to compare this with the distribution of genotypes in the putative ancestral populations. Using a combination of genetic distance measures, assignment and phylogenetic analyses, we find a high degree of similarity between the Faroese Y chromosomes and the Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic Y chromosomes but also some similarity with the Scottish and Irish Y chromosomes.

Analysis of transmission of novel polymorphisms in the somatostatin receptor 5 (SSTR5) gene in patients with autism.

Infantile autism is a pervasive developmental disorder with a strong genetic component. The mode of inheritance appears to be complex and no specific susceptibility genes have yet been identified. Chromosome 16p13.

Parental age and risk of schizophrenia: a case-control study.

Background: Advanced paternal age has been suggested as a possible risk factor for schizophrenia. It is not known whether this is explained by known risk factors for schizophrenia, including sibship characteristics, death of a parent before first hospital admission, season and place of birth, and family history of psychiatric illness, or by socioeconomic factors. We investigated the risk of schizophrenia associated with parental age, adjusting for known risk factors for schizophrenia, including family psychiatric history, and controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors.

Genome wide scan using homozygosity mapping and linkage analyses of a single pedigree with affective disorder suggests oligogenic inheritance.

The present study reports results from a genome scan on a family with bipolar affective disorder in which the parents are first cousins and four of the offsprings and one grandchild have affective disorder. The study searched for risk loci for affective disorder by searching for homozygous segments or more complex inherited loci using parametric and non-parametric multipoint linkage analysis. In addition dominant, multipoint, affecteds-only linkage analyses were performed as a supplement to previous analyses.

Genome scan meta-analysis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, part III: Bipolar disorder.

Genome scans of bipolar disorder (BPD) have not produced consistent evidence for linkage. The rank-based genome scan meta-analysis (GSMA) method was applied to 18 BPD genome scan data sets in an effort to identify regions with significant support for linkage in the combined data. The two primary analyses considered available linkage data for "very narrow" (i.

Linkage disequilibrium and demographic history of the isolated population of the Faroe Islands.

The isolated population of the Faroe Islands has a history of recent expansion after being limited to a small size for centuries. Such an isolated population may be ideal for linkage disequilibrium mapping of disease genes if linkage disequilibrium (LD) extends over large regions. Analyses of 18 markers on 12q24.

Medical disorders among inpatients with autism in Denmark according to ICD-8: a nationwide register-based study.

Possible associations between autism and specific medical disorders have been suggested, and this could be of relevance in the clinical examination and treatment of patients and may help to identify factors involved in the etiology or pathophysiology of autism. Two population-based Danish registers were used to investigate the occurrence of medical disorders in patients with autism according to ICD-8 and in a matched control sample. A total of 29 of the 244 patients (11.

European combined analysis of the CTG18.1 and the ERDA1 CAG/CTG repeats in bipolar disorder.

Several groups have reported association between large CAG/CTG repeats in the genome and BP disorder using the Repeat Expansion Detection (RED) method. Molecular interpretation studies demonstrated that around 90% of the large CAG/CTG repeats detected by RED can by explained by repeat size at either the CTG18.1 or ERDA-1 locus.

Investigation of two variants in the DOPA decarboxylase gene in patients with autism.

Though genetic risk factors are important for the development of autism, no specific risk alleles have yet been identified. DOPA decarboxylase (DDC) is involved in both the catecholaminergic and serotonergic pathways and may be considered a functional candidate gene for autism. The present study is the first to test if two new variants of possible functional significance in the DDC gene increase the susceptibility to autism.

Search for a shared segment on chromosome 10q26 in patients with bipolar affective disorder or schizophrenia from the Faroe Islands.

Previous linkage studies have suggested a new locus for bipolar affective disorder and possibly also for schizophrenia on chromosome 10q26. We searched for allelic association and chromosome segment and haplotype sharing on chromosome 10q26 among distantly related patients with bipolar affective disorder or schizophrenia and controls from the relatively isolated population of the Faroe Islands by investigating 22 microsatellite markers from a 35 cM region. We used a combined approach with both assumption free tests and tests based on genealogical relationships.