T. Sander et al., LACK OF LINKAGE BETWEEN IDIOPATHIC GENERALIZED EPILEPSIES AND THE GENE ENCODING THE NEURAL CELL-ADHESION MOLECULE, Epilepsy research, 25(2), 1996, pp. 139-145
Hereditary factors play a major role in the etiology of idiopathic gen
eralized epilepsies (IGEs). The frequent neuropathological occurrence
of microdysgeneses in the brain of IGE patients implies that genes reg
ulating neural migration and cell adhesion might be involved in epilep
togenesis of age-related generalized seizures, Our present linkage stu
dy tested the hypothesis that DNA sequence variants associated with th
e gene encoding the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) confer geneti
c susceptibility to IGE traits in 57 families ascertained through pati
ents with either juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, juvenile or childhood ab
sence epilepsy. Our consistently negative results provide evidence aga
inst a common major effect of NCAM gene variants to the expression of
IGEs with age-related onset from childhood to adolescence.