EVIDENCE FOR A NOVEL GENE FOR FAMILIAL FEBRILE CONVULSIONS, FEB2, LINKED TO CHROMOSOME 19P IN AN EXTENDED FAMILY FROM THE MIDWEST

Febrile convulsions are a common form of childhood seizure, It is esti mated that between 2 and 5% of children will have a febrile convulsion before the age of 5. It has long been recognized that there is a sign ificant genetic component for susceptibility to this type of seizure. Wallace, Berkovic and co-workers recently reported linkage of a putati ve autosomal dominant febrile convulsion gene to chromosome 8q13-21. W e report here another autosomal dominant febrile convulsion locus on c hromosome 19p. Linkage analysis in this large multi-generational famil y gave a maximum pairwise lod score of 4.52 with marker Mfd120 at locu s D19S177. Linkage to the chromosome 8 locus was excluded in this fami ly, Haplotype analysis using both affected and unaffected family membe rs indicates that this febrile convulsion gene, which we call FEB2, ca n be localized to an 11.7 cM, 1-2 Mb section of chromosome 19p13.3, be tween loci D19S591 and D19S395.