• S P Ball and K J Johnson.
• Department of Biological Sciences, University of Exeter, Washington-Singer Laboratories.
• J. Med. Genet. 1993 Feb 1; 30 (2): 89-93.

AbstractMalignant hyperthermia susceptibility remains the commonest cause of death owing to general anaesthesia. This is despite the availability of presymptomatic testing, admittedly by a highly invasive method, and a recognised treatment for implementation immediately a patient shows signs of developing a crisis. Recently the finding of linkage to markers from chromosome 19q13.1-13.2 and the identification of mutations in a candidate gene held out hope of genetic diagnosis being available. However, it is likely that only about 50% of families have a mutation of the skeletal muscle calcium release channel gene. With this degree of genetic heterogeneity, presymptomatic testing based on DNA markers can only be offered at present to a limited number of families where linkage to markers from 19q13.1-13.2 has been clearly shown.

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