KIAA0319 and ROBO1: evidence on association with reading and pleiotropic effects on language and mathematics abilities in developmental dyslexia.

Substantial heritability has been reported for developmental dyslexia (DD), and KIAA0319 and ROBO1 appear as more than plausible candidate susceptibility genes for this developmental disorder. Converging evidence indicates that developmental difficulties in oral language and mathematics can predate or co-occur with DD, and substantial genetic correlations have been found between these abilities and reading traits. In this study, we explored the role of eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms spanning within KIAA0319 and ROBO1 genes, and DD as a dichotomic trait, related neuropsychological phenotypes and comorbid language and mathematical (dis)abilities in a large cohort of 493 Italian nuclear families ascertained through a proband with a diagnosis of DD.

Putative risk factors in developmental dyslexia: a case-control study of Italian children.

Although dyslexia runs in families, several putative risk factors that cannot be immediately identified as genetic predict reading disability. Published studies analyzed one or a few risk factors at a time, with relatively inconsistent results. To assess the contribution of several putative risk factors to the development of dyslexia, we conducted a case-control study of 403 Italian children, 155 with dyslexia, by implementing a stepwise logistic regression applied to the entire sample, and then to boys and girls separately.