Two hundred thirty-three randomly selected families provided a population for studying the effects of familial relationships, age, diet, body weight, and urinary electrolyte excretion on blood pressure. There was a strong familial component for urinary sodium, potassium, and creatinine excretion and for systolic blood pressure. In individuals, age, heart rate, and body weight were independently...

BACKGROUND Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a rare and devastating disease affecting skin and internal organs. Familial aggregation of SSc and co-aggregation with other autoimmune diseases is rarely reported. METHODS We identified 23,658,577 beneficiaries registered with the National Health Insurance database in 2010, 1891 of whom had SSc. We identified 21,009,551 parent-child relationships and 17...

BACKGROUND Since genetic and most environmental factors shape the context of families, some studies have been initiated to investigate the role of familial relationships in metabolic syndrome (MetS). OBJECTIVES To estimate the familial aggregation of MetS and its components by identifying both case and control probands among Tehranian adults with different socio-behavioral and reproductive ch...

CONTEXT It is unclear whether late-onset Parkinson disease (PD), which is the most typical and most common form of the disease, has a familial component. Evidence for familial aggregation is key to whether research should focus on gene discovery or search for environmental factors. OBJECTIVE To investigate familial aggregation of early-onset and late-onset PD separately. METHODS Using survi...

Deficits in phonological short-term memory and aspects of verb grammar morphology have been proposed as phenotypic markers of specific language impairment (SLI) with the suggestion that these traits are likely to be under different genetic influences. This investigation in 300 first-degree relatives of 93 probands with SLI examined familial aggregation and genetic linkage of two measures though...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Familial occurrence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is well documented. Reports from Western countries have shown a higher familial occurrence of ulcerative colitis (UC) in first- and second-degree relatives than that in the Asian UC population. No data are currently available from the Indian subcontinent in this regard. We present our data on the familial aggregation of UC....

To assess familial aggregation of autism, 86 autistic subjects were linked to the Utah Genealogical Database. Kinship coefficients were estimated for all possible pairs of autistic subjects and then averaged. Fifty replicate sets of matched control subjects (86 members in each set) were drawn randomly from the database, and the average kinship coefficient was computed for all possible pairs of ...

OBJECTIVE The authors conducted meta-analyses of data from family and twin studies of panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to explore the roles of genetic and environmental factors in their etiology. METHOD MEDLINE searches were performed to identify potential primary studies of these disorders. Data from studies that met inclusion cri...

Locus mapping has uncovered diverse etiologies for familial atrial fibrillation (AF), dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), and mixed cardiac phenotype syndromes, yet the molecular basis for these disorders remains idiopathic in most cases. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) provides a powerful new tool for familial disease gene discovery. Here, synergistic application of these genomic strategies identified ...

BACKGROUND Calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS) is the most common valvular defect in developed countries. Unlike mitral valve prolapse, there is no demonstration that a familial factor could play a role in the occurrence of this disease. The aim of this study was to demonstrate a familial aggregation for CAVS. METHODS AND RESULTS We used the files of 2527 consecutive patients operated on fo...