Studies on an isolated West Indies population: IV. Genetic study of hearing loss.

Hearing troubles were found to be very frequent among inhabitants of French origin in a small Caribbean island. Segregation analysis of hearing loss was performed in 165 complete nuclear families and revealed that familial aggregation could be entirely explained by a single recessive gene with high frequency (0.40). Homozygous individuals for this gene would probably be more susceptible to ototoxic agents than other individuals. High frequency of this gene may be due to a founder effect.