Your child could inherit more than your looks
THEIR father’s sense of humour, your grandmother’s beautiful grey eyes, or the beautiful kink in your hair that you often get complimented on are often all that you allow yourself to think about when there is a baby on the way. But Dr Anona Griffith, paediatrician at Gateway Plaza, Old Harbour, says that parents should be concerned about more than the physical appearance of their children.
“Looks and mannerisms or behaviours are often the clue that links family members to each other, but there is more to inheritance than that. Often physical features offer clues to underlying conditions that may be present in families, one such condition being Marfan Syndrome, in which patients have musculoskeletal and cardiac abnormalities among other problems,” Dr Griffith explained.
She pointed out that a child’s genetic make-up could mean that they not only inherit, but that they may also be more susceptible to certain health conditions.
“Genetics is the biological process of passing genes from parents to offspring. These genes express specific traits including physical traits as well as the risk of diseases or disorders,” Dr Griffith said.
She explained that genetic conditions can be detected prior to delivery on routine prenatal testing, or after birth through neonatal screening, a method used to identify some of the more common genetic conditions in an infant.
There are a number of illnesses that these procedures are essential to identifying.
“Research from the Sickle Cell Unit has revealed that one in every 10 Jamaicans has the trait (HbAS), while one out of every 300 Jamaicans has the disease (HbSS). With the establishment of screening programmes, there has been an increase in the identification of people with the sickle cell trait and disease,” Dr Griffith pointed out.
She said that on the list of genetic-associated health conditions is cancer, not only because cases are on the rise, but because there is an increase in findings of cancer-causing genes known as oncogenes. “There are certain conditions called family cancer syndromes in which there are inherited gene defects which lead to cancers, for example, colorectal, breast and lung cancer,” she said.
“These are just a few of the cancers for which oncogenes have been identified.”
She cautioned parents that even with an increase in the use of technology to establish the presence of and the risk factors for developing a condition and potentially allow for preventative measures and monitoring, the possibility exists that doctors could still be blindsided by the existence of certain conditions that could surface later because they were hidden in the recessive genes.
