Kin-cohort designs for gene characterization.

Abstract
In the kin-cohort design, a volunteer with or without disease (the proband) agrees to be genotyped, and one obtains information on the history of a disease in first-degree relatives of the proband. From these data, one can estimate the penetrance of an autosomal dominant gene, and this technique has been used to estimate the probability that Ashkenazi Jewish women with specific mutations of BRCA1 or BRCA2 will develop breast cancer.