Comments | curecrohns: The Kids Are Alright (plus or minus 10%)

flamouse in curecrohns

The Kids Are Alright (plus or minus 10%)

Nov 26, 2007 18:55

Every now and then the question of heredity pops up here, and a while back I mentioned I was planning to do a little research on the topic. Much as I love the Internets, I decided to spend some time in an actual library (a medical school library, though I am no medical student). I was looking at Crohn's in particular, but a lot of the research ( Read more... )

genetics, parents, heredity

Comments 12

undersea November 27 2007, 00:07:53 UTC

interesting statistics to read! thanks!

heanie November 27 2007, 00:47:18 UTC

Thanks for the synopsis!

splodgenoodles November 27 2007, 02:37:07 UTC

Thanks for that. Interesting stuff.

lappy9 November 27 2007, 06:08:23 UTC

yes thank you for that, ive wondered about the heredity thing very much. Neither of my parents have an IBD, i was diagnosed with CD at 28, and the only other interesting note is that my younger brother developed Psoriasis at 3 years old (he is now 28), which is also an auto-immune disorder.

My husband does not have an IBD or any auto-immune issues, but I worry about our son having it down the line. At least i know what to look for.

gizzard November 27 2007, 12:08:28 UTC

Really interesting stuff, thanks for compiling it all :) However, I'm hearing all the time that only mums pass CD onto their kids, whereas fathers generally don't, or in the case of my crohn's riddled extended family, pass on something less severe; IBS and celiacs. Have you read about anything regarding this anywhere?

flamouse November 27 2007, 21:37:17 UTC

I am looking at the tables on the Belgian study - (5) in my references.

For females with Crohn's disease, their daughters had a 10.7% chance and sons a 5.9% chance of developing CD as well.

For males with CD, daughters had an 8.6% chance and sons have a 4.3% chance of developing it.

So, yes, in this study there does seem to be a slightly higher rate of transmission from mothers than from fathers, but I doubt it's statistically significant and the paper doesn't say. If I was feeling particularly ambitious I would calculate the significance myself, but I'm a little busy for the time being.

I did read somewhere (not sure, but definitely one of the references) that Crohn's is thought to be the more complex of the illnesses, requiring more faulty genes, which then makes it more likely that a parent with CD will have a child with UC compared to the likelihood that a parent with UC will have a child with CD. But that was a little fuzzy in the paper, so I didn't cite it.