familial |
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A familial disorder occurs in families and can be inherited. This means that it may be passed from parent to child via a gene. Some disorders are strongly inherited, e.g. Huntington's disease, and some forms of Alzheimer's disease are also inherited in this way. For example, the ApoE4 gene may be involved in a minority of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Other illnesses are only weakly inherited - the tendency to develop the disorder may be passed from parent to child but other factors may be as important in deciding whether that tendency will result in the illness. Anxiety disorders, depression and schizophrenia appear to be this weakly inherited form of familial brain disorders, although the associated genes have not yet been identified. |
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