X-chromosome workshop.

Researchers presented results of ongoing research to the X-chromosome workshop of the Fifth World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics, covering a wide range of disorders: X-linked infantile spasms; a complex phenotype associated with deletions of Xp11; male homosexuality; degree of handedness; bipolar affective disorder; schizophrenia; childhood onset psychosis; and autism. This report summarizes the presentations, as well as reviewing previous studies. The focus of this report is on linkage findings for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder from a number of groups. For schizophrenia, low positive lod scores were obtained for markers DXS991 and DXS993 from two studies, although the sharing of alleles was greatest from brother-brother pairs in one study, and sister-sister in the other. Data from the Irish schizophrenia study was also submitted, with no strong evidence for linkage on the X chromosome. For bipolar disease, following the report of a Finnish family linked to Xq24-q27, the Columbia group reported some positive results for this region from 57 families, however, another group found no evidence for linkage to this region. Of interest, is the clustering of low positive linkage results that point to regions for possible further study.