Fine P E
J Med Genet. 1977 Dec;14(6):399-407. doi: 10.1136/jmg.14.6.399.
A number of infections of man, as well as of other animal and plant species, are heavily dependent upon 'vertical transmission'--that is direct parent-to-progeny transfer--for their maintenance in host populations. Such vertical transmission may be considered as a form of inheritance. It is usually non-Mendelian. This paper discusses the implications of such inheritance for the distribution of disease in families. A method is described for making quantitative predictions of prevalence rates of infection and of disease within different classes of relatives of either infected or uninfected probands. It is pointed out that, whereas a maternal line excess is to be expected among relatives of positive probands, the opposite should be found in families of negative probands. Expected differences between maternal and paternal line prevalence rates of observable disease decline rapidly with distance of relationship from the proband, and are greatly reduced by diagnostic insensitivity (analogous to penetrance). The implications of this analytic method for the design of family history studies are discussed. Published data on familial breast cancer are reviewed, and found to show no evidence that this condition is associated with a non-integrated vertically transmitted agent.
许多人类感染，以及其他动植物物种的感染，在很大程度上依赖“垂直传播”——即从亲代直接传给子代——来在宿主种群中维持。这种垂直传播可被视为一种遗传形式。它通常是非孟德尔式的。本文讨论了这种遗传对疾病在家族中分布的影响。描述了一种方法，用于对感染率和疾病患病率在受感染或未受感染先证者的不同亲属类别中的情况进行定量预测。指出，虽然在阳性先证者的亲属中预计会出现母系亲属过多的情况，但在阴性先证者的家族中情况则相反。可观察到的疾病在母系和父系亲属患病率之间的预期差异会随着与先证者关系的疏远而迅速下降，并且会因诊断不敏感（类似于外显率）而大大降低。讨论了这种分析方法对家族史研究设计的影响。对已发表的家族性乳腺癌数据进行了综述，发现没有证据表明这种疾病与非整合性垂直传播因子有关。
