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Distribution of Ancestral Secondary Cases in Bipolar Affective Disorders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Eliot Slater
Affiliation:
Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, S.E.5 Institute of Psychiatry (Genetics), De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London, S.E.5
Joyce Maxwell
Affiliation:
Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, S.E.5 Institute of Psychiatry (Genetics), De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London, S.E.5
John Scott Price
Affiliation:
Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, S.E.5 Institute of Psychiatry (Genetics), De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London, S.E.5

Extract

Perris (1966) has produced evidence that affective disorders which manifest both manic and depressive phases are genetically distinct from recurrent affective illnesses characterized by a series of depressive phases only. One of the most challenging aspects of this most interesting work by Penis is the suggestion that these bipolar illnesses might be transmitted in at least a fair proportion of cases by major genes at one or more loci. According to the calculations of Edwards (1960) the expectation of disease in the first degree relatives of probands with a polygenically determined disorder is approximately the square root of the expectation in the general population. In Perris's material the expectation in the first degree relatives of the 138 bipolar probands was 0·098 (9·8 per cent) for bipolar psychosis, and 0·185 (18·5 per cent) with the inclusion of other affective disorders which might be considered to be incomplete forms of bipolar psychosis. Although in population studies the cases of bipolar psychosis have been included with unipolar psychosis, and therefore the expectation of bipolar psychosis is not known, it is very unlikely to be as high as 0·03 (3·4 per cent) which is the square of 0·185.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

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References

Edwards, J. H. (1960). ‘The simulation of mendelism.’ Acta genet. (Basel), 10, 6370.Google Scholar
Perris, C. (1966). ‘A study of bipolar (manic-depressive) and unipolar recurrent depressive psychoses.’ Ada psychiat. Scand., Supp. 194.Google Scholar
Slater, E. (1966). ‘Expectation of abnormality on paternal and maternal sides: a computational model.’ J. med. Genet., 3, 159–61.Google Scholar
Slater, E., and Tsuang, M.-T. (1968). ‘Abnormality on paternal and maternal sides: observations in schizophrenia and manic-depression.’ J. med. Genet., 5, 197–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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