Familial Aggregation of Parkinson's Disease in Iceland.Familial Aggregation familial aggregation n. Occurrence of a trait in more members of a family than can be readily accounted for by chance. of Parkinson's Disease Parkinson's disease or Parkinsonism, degenerative brain disorder first described by the English surgeon James Parkinson in 1817. When there is no known cause, the disease usually appears after age 40 and is referred to as Parkinson's disease. in Iceland Sveinbjornsdottir S, Hicks AA, Jonsson T, et al (National University Hospital and deCODE genetics deCODE genetics, Inc. (Íslensk erfðagreining in Icelandic) NASDAQ: DCGN is a biopharmaceutical company based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The company was founded in 1996 to identify human genes associated with common diseases using population studies, and apply the , Reykjavik, Iceland; Department of Human Genetics Human genetics A discipline concerned with genetically determined resemblances and differences among human beings. Technological advances in the visualization of human chromosomes have shown that abnormalities of chromosome number or structure are surprisingly , University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill), N Engl J Med. 2000;343:1765-1770. The early-onset variant of Parkinson disease Parkinson Disease Definition Parkinson disease (PD) is a progressive movement disorder marked by tremors, rigidity, slow movements (bradykinesia), and posture instability. has been shown to have an inherited component; however, the role of genetics in the more common late-onset form of this disease is controversial. The purpose of this study was to use population-based studies and genealogic data to assess the genetic contribution to Parkinson disease, including the late-onset form. The researchers reviewed the medical records of living and deceased Icelanders diagnosed with Parkinson disease over the past 50 years. After confirmation of the diagnosis, they identified a group of 772 people with Parkinson disease. Of this group, a subgroup of 560 had symptoms that began after the age of 50, qualifying them as having the late-onset variant of the disease. Using Icelandic genealogic databases that contain information for the past 11 centuries, the researchers established pedigrees, kinship coefficients, and risk ratios (risk of a relative having the disease divided by the risk in the general population) for the entire group and for matched controls to determine whether the people with Parkinson disease were more related to each other than to randomly chosen Icelanders. The Icelanders with Parkinson disease, including those with the late-onset form, were significantly more related to each other than the control subjects were. The risk ratios for siblings, offspring, and nephews/nieces were all significantly larger than 1 for both the entire group (6.3, 3.0, 2.4, respectively) and the late-onset group (6.7, 3.2, 2.7, respectively). According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the authors, the results of this study support the hypothesis that this disease is a complex, multifactorial multifactorial /mul·ti·fac·to·ri·al/ (mul?te-fak-tor´e-al) 1. of or pertaining to, or arising through the action of many factors. 2. disorder caused by interactions between multiple genes and unknown environmental factors. Anthony E Kincaid, PT, PhD Creighton University Omaha, Neb |
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