Parental sex effect in families with alcoholism

Parental sex effects have been shown to influence the inheritance of a numb er of complex disorders. In this paper we performed affected sib-pair analy ses on 105 families with recurrent alcoholism to evaluate the effects that the parent of origin might have on this disorder. Three alternative classif ication schemes were used and the families were grouped as maternal, patern al, mixed, or unknown. Paternal effects were observed at D9S64, D16S475, an d D16S2622, while maternal effects were expressed at FABP2, D8S280, D8S1715 , and D8S1988. Except for D16S2622, none of these markers resulted in a sig nificant p-value when all families were analyzed together. These results su ggest that the parental sex should not be ignored and that a discriminatory analysis should always be performed. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.