[Study on genetic epidemiology of albinism]

Segregation analysis and consanguinity analysis were applied to 37 albinism families ascertained from Shandong province (P. R. China) to study the genetic heterogeneity of the disease. Our results show that albinism is an autosomal recessive disease with multilocus. The least number of the detrimental loci is 8, The average frequence of detrimental genes is 0.0023, and 3.83% individuals in general population are carriers. The incidence among the offsprings of the first cousin marriages would be 22 times higher than that in the general population.