Genetic traits in common diseases

BMJ 1995;310:1482-1483 (10 June)

Editorials

Genetic traits in common diseases

Support the adage that autoimmunity is the price paid for eradicatinginfectious diseases

An important current topic of medical research is the localisationof genes implicated in the susceptibility to common chronicdiseases such as insulin dependent diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis,and multiple sclerosis. This has been greatly facilitated bythe use of the polymerase chain reaction to characterise polymorphicmicrosatellite markers and the advent of automated technologyand computer software to construct high resolution genetic mapscovering the entire genome.

A recent example of the success of these methods occurred inthe genome-wide search in families for genes conferring susceptibilityto insulin dependent diabetes.¹ Population studies, based onepidemiological principles, test the association of diseasewith specific genetic markers, and recent advances have alsobeen made with this approach.

Most of these common diseases are clearly polygenic, involvingseveral loci, and many population association studies leavelittle doubt that an . . . [Full text of this article]

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