WASHINGTON — Separation anxiety in some children may be due to extra doses of a particular gene.
The gene, GTF2I, is located on human chromosome 7. People missing part of the chromosome that contains GTF2I have a condition called Williams syndrome and are generally extra social. On the other hand, people who have extra copies of that part of chromosome 7 may have social and other types of anxiety: About 26 percent of children with an extra copy the region containing GTF2I have been diagnosed by a doctor as having separation anxiety, human geneticist Lucy Osborne of the University of Toronto said November 15 at a press conference at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting.