Dominant inheritance of cleft of the soft palate

A family is described with apparent dominantly inherited complete cleft of the soft palate. The complexity of the genetics of oral clefts is emphasized. The inheritance of oral clefts is complex. Different modes of inheritance have been reported for clefts both simple and in syndromes (Gorlin et al., 1971), but the majority of cases of nonsyndromal clefts appears to have a low, yet significant, genetic component (Fraser et al., 1974). This report describes a family with cleft of the soft palate which appears to follow a dominant pattern of inheritance. To our knowledge this is the first reported instance of dominantly inherited cleft palate.