A linkage study of schizophrenia with DNA markers from chromosome 8p21-p22 in 25 multiplex families

Two recent genome-wide searches for linkage (Lasseter et al., 1994; Moises et al., 1995) suggested that a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia might be located at chromosome 8p21-p22. We attempted to replicate these findings by performing a linkage study of schizophrenia with four DNA markers from this region using 25 multiply affected families. Neither the lod score method nor non-parametric extended sib-pair analysis yielded any evidence for linkage, even under the assumption of locus heterogeneity. We conclude that there is unlikely to be a major gene in the 8p21-p22 region which confers susceptibility to schizophrenia in our set of families. However we cannot exclude the possibility of a major gene present in other families, or of a susceptibility gene with a moderate but widespread effect which we cannot detect.