Linkage of leprosy susceptibility to Parkinson's disease genes.

In early 2003, an international team of scientists conducted a genome scan in Vietnamese multiplex leprosy families and found that susceptibility to leprosy was significantly linked to region q25 on the long arm of chromosome 6. Further confirmation of the chromosome 6 locus was provided by high-resolution linkage mapping in simplex leprosy families. Now, in a continuation of these findings, the team has pinpointed the chromosome 6 susceptibility locus to the 5' regulatory promoter region shared by both the Parkinson's disease gene PARK2 and its co-regulated gene PACRG. The surprising discovery has important implications for the understanding of leprosy pathogenesis and for the strategy of genetic analysis of infectious diseases.