A Balanced 2:18 Translocation and Familial Schizophrenia: Falling Short of an Association

To the Editor.— A search for the concurrence of cytogenetic anomalies and major psychiatric disorders transmitted within the same family is certainly warranted to save time and resources III Pedigree 218 Pedigree 218. Solid squares represent schizophrenia as defined by DSM-III-R5; shaded squares, alcohol dependence (DSM-III-R); and asterisk, balanced translocation t(2:18) (p11.2, p11.2). in the process of identifying genes that predispose to major psychoses. 1 The extremely rare and striking occurrence of these two phenomena transmitted within the same family has been reported on different occasions. 2,3 However, the leads provided by these reports should be taken with caution if there is a small number of clearly affected subjects in the pedigree under scrutiny 2 or if there is a lack of specificity of the disorders associated with the karyotypic anomaly. 3 In the process of screening multiplex families densely affected by schizophrenia in Eastern Quebec, Canada, 4 we detected