Editor—Over the past 12 years, 26 patients with an unusual syndrome of congenital hypoparathyroidism associated with severe prenatal and postnatal growth retardation and a pattern of facial anomalies have been seen at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Saudi Arabia.1 2 The disorder has been listed by McKusick in OMIM as “hypoparathyroidism-retardation-dysmorphism syndrome; HRD” as entry 241410. Recently, Parvari et al 3 reported the assignment of the gene for this disorder to chromosome 1 at 1q42-43. Their report was based on a study of consanguineous Bedouin families from Israel and their linkage analysis was based on homozygosity by descent.4 This reports describes a study of three consanguineous Saudi families, which yielded results consistent with the 1q42-43 location of the responsible gene.

Blood samples were collected and DNA …