Bipolar Disorder Daily News Blog

More Bipolar Genetic Links Identified

Bipolar Disorder Genetic linkage to chromosome 6q identified in Caucasians

It was reported this week in the American Journal of Medical Genetics that researchers have found a genetic linkage of bipolar disorder to chromosome 6q appears to be a distinctive feature of Caucasian populations.

Scientists in the United States "recently reported genome-wide significant linkage to chromosome 6q for bipolar disorder, in a study of 25 Portuguese families, using the Human Mapping Assay Xba 131 (HMA10K)."

"To further address the potential generalizability of these findings to other populations, we have also examined allelic heterozygosity in our subpopulations and in three reference populations (Caucasian, East Asian, and African-American)," according to the report. "This analysis indicated that the PIC population is highly correlated to the Caucasian reference population (r=0.86) for all of chromosome 6."

The study reports that:

"Taken together, these observations suggest a shared genetic liability among Portuguese populations for bipolar disorder on chromosome 6q and that the PIC population is likely representative of Caucasians in general," the researchers concluded.

Source: American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B - Neuropsychiatric Genetics (Genetic linkage of bipolar disorder to chromosome 6q22 is a consistent finding in Portuguese subpopulations and may generalize to broader populations. Am J Med Genet Part B, 2005;134B(1):119-121).