Parental sex effect in families with alcoholism

Parental sex effects have been shown to influence the inheritance of a number of complex disorders. In this paper we performed affected sib-pair analyses on 105 families with recurrent alcoholism to evaluate the effects that the parent of origin might have on this disorder. Three alternative classification schemes were used and the families were grouped as maternal, paternal, mixed, or unknown. Paternal effects were observed at D9S64, D16S475, and D16S2622, while maternal effects were expressed at FABP2, D8S280, D8S1715, and D8S1988. Except for D16S2622, none of these markers resulted in a significant p-value when all families were analyzed together. These results suggest that the parental sex should not be ignored and that a discriminatory analysis should always be performed.