Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507030148
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Doctors have known for years that bedwetting can run in families. But a Danish research team has, for the first time, linked the trait to a specific set of genes located on the 13th human chromosome.
The new findings ``will legitimize something that has been subject to myth,'' said Dr. Donald Shifrin, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. ``We can now say to parents, `Look, this is not your fault' ... What the medical profession will get out of this may be less than what the parenting profession will get out of this.''
Ten percent of 8-year-olds, Shifrin said, are affected by what doctors call primary nocturnal enuresis - they have never experienced an extended period of dryness. Bedwetting spontaneously disappears in about 15 percent of children each year.
By adolescence, it affects only about 1 percent of children, Shifrin said.
Bedwetting often is seen as a behavioral problem, stemming from social or emotional difficulties. Some parents blame themselves; others resort to punishing their children.
But Shifrin said doctors have found that if one parent was a bedwetter, there is a 30 percent to 40 percent chance that a child will be. If both parents were, the probability rises to 60 percent to 70 percent.
Those figures, the Danish team says, match the behavior of a dominant gene.
The researchers, at the Danish Center for Genome Research in Copenhagen, selected 11 families with a history of severe bedwetting from a pool of 400 in the Copenhagen area. Genetic analysis of five of those families indicated that the gene was located on an arm of Chromosome 13, but the researchers were unable to identify the exact gene responsible.
Dr. Hans Eiberg, lead researcher on the study, said the still-unidentified gene could be responsible for about half to three-quarters of inherited bedwetting. While it's unclear how the gene works, he estimated that it would be precisely located within five years.
Bedwetting is often treated with medications or with conditioning techniques such as alarms that wake a child who is wetting the bed. Doctors said the genetic research will probably have little immediate impact on treatment.
by CNB