Hereditary disease
| Genetic disorder | |
|---|---|
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| A boy with Down syndrome, one of the most common genetic disorders | |
| Classification and external resources | |
| Specialty | Medical genetics |
| DiseasesDB | 28838 |
| MeSH | D030342 |
A genetic disorder is a genetic problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome, especially a condition that is present from birth (congenital). Most genetic disorders are quite rare and affect one person in every several thousands or millions.
Genetic disorders may be hereditary, passed down from the parents' genes. In other genetic disorders, defects may be caused by new mutations or changes to the DNA. In such cases, the defect will only be passed down if it occurs in the germ line. The same disease, such as some forms of cancer, may be caused by an inherited genetic condition in some people, by new mutations in other people, and mainly by environmental causes in other people. Whether, when and to what extent a person with the genetic defect or abnormality will actually suffer from the disease is almost always affected by the environmental factors and events in the person's development.
Some types of recessive gene disorders confer an advantage in certain environments when only one copy of the gene is present.
A single-gene disorder is the result of a single mutated gene. Over 4000 human diseases are caused by single-gene defects. Single-gene disorders can be passed on to subsequent generations in several ways. Genomic imprinting and uniparental disomy, however, may affect inheritance patterns. The divisions between recessive and dominant types are not "hard and fast", although the divisions between autosomal and X-linked types are (since the latter types are distinguished purely based on the chromosomal location of the gene). For example, achondroplasia is typically considered a dominant disorder, but children with two genes for achondroplasia have a severe skeletal disorder of which achondroplasics could be viewed as carriers. Sickle-cell anemia is also considered a recessive condition, but heterozygous carriers have increased resistance to malaria in early childhood, which could be described as a related dominant condition. When a couple where one partner or both are sufferers or carriers of a single-gene disorder wish to have a child, they can do so through in vitro fertilization, which means they can then have a preimplantation genetic diagnosis to check whether the embryo has the genetic disorder.
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Wikipedia