ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT INHERITANCE PATTERNS IN PREECLAMPSIA ECLAMPSIA SYNDROME/

Objective: To investigate how well various inheritance models would ex plain the familial tendency of the preeclampsia/eclampsia syndrome. Me thods: The prevalence among seven groups of women with definite probab ilities of exhibiting the disorder from six different family studies w as used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the contributions to disease liability from major genes and multifactorial transmission. R esults: Models involving a single major gene with incomplete penetranc e or multifactorial inheritance offered considerably better fit to the observed data than no familial transmission at all or autosomal domin ant and recessive inheritance models with complete penetrance. Of the major gene models, a dominant mode of transmission was preferred. From the extremes of the joint 95% confidence region for the gene frequenc y (p) and penetrance (f), the corresponding confidence limits for the best estimates were 0.06 < p < 0.16 and 0.38 > f > 0.23, respectively. Conclusions: These results indicate that the prevalence of the diseas e is not best explained by simple Mendelian inheritance as previously suggested. A major dominant gene model with reduced penetrance or mult ifactorial inheritance should be considered the best working hypothese s at present.