Exclusion of dominant mutations within the FTDP-17 locus on chromosome 17 for Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a prevalent movement disorder, and 10-30% of PD is familial. Several neurodegenerative disorders which are collectively ca lled frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism have been mapped to chromosom e 17q and mutations in tau have been identified. The clinical and pathologi cal overlap suggests that these related conditions may be due to mutations in tau. We examined linkage to the candidate region on chromosome 17 includ ing and surrounding tau in eight familial PD kindreds. We found no evidence for linkage and excluded the 6cM candidate region which suggest that in ou r families, PD is not caused by dominant mutations within tau. (C) 1999 Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.