Indian childhood cirrhosis--a heritable disease.

Pedigree charts of 20 families with an index case of Indian childhood cirrhosis, and 70 families of age-matched controls are analysed. Only 177 families were informative for segregation analysis. A single ascertainment model was used for analysis. The hypotheses of autosomal-recessive, partial sex-linkage, and doubly recessive inheritance were found untenable. Multifactorial inheritance was found more plausible. The estimates of heritability of liability were 0.904 for propositi sib and 1.587 for propositi cousins, which indicates a strong role of heredity in the etiology of the disease.