Linkage analysis of a large African family segregating stuttering suggests polygenic inheritance.

We describe a pedigree of 71 individuals from the Republic of Cameroon in which at least 33 individuals have a clinical diagnosis of persistent stuttering. The high concentration of stuttering individuals suggests that the pedigree either contains a single highly penetrant gene variant or that assortative mating led to multiple stuttering-associated variants being transmitted in different parts of the pedigree. No single locus displayed significant linkage to stuttering in initial genome-wide scans with microsatellite and SNP markers.

Finding good resources for treating school-age children who stutter.

One of the challenges facing school-based speech-language pathologists is finding appropriate resources for use in treating children who stutter. This article highlights several excellent resources and provides illustrations of how some of these resources may be used. The need to adapt resources for use with specific clients to maximize treatment effectiveness is emphasized.