HLA and Major Affective Disorder

Fifteen unrelated multiplex families, each containing two or more offspring with a diagnosis of major affective disorder, were HLA typed to provide additional data bearing on the proposed linkage of affective disorder susceptibility genes with the major histocompatibility complex on chromosome 6. Altogether 19 parents, 38 affected children, and 13 unaffected children were typed. The distribution of shared HLA haplotypes among pairs of affected siblings, pairs of affected-unaffected siblings, and various diagnostic subsets of these families fails to lend any support for the HLA linkage hypothesis.