The influence of gender on the susceptibility to multiple sclerosis in sibships

A. D. Sadovnick, D. E. Bulman, L. Hashimoto, M. B. D'Hooghe and G. C. Ebers
Department of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

A population-based study of pairs of relatives (siblings, second- and third-degree) concordant for multiple sclerosis did not show an excess of like-sexed pairs. In addition, data on human lymphocyte antigen typing for sibling pairs concordant for multiple sclerosis did not find an increase in haplotype sharing for like-sexed pairs. These data do not support the notion that sex-related factors influence multiple-sclerosis susceptibility in families.