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Re: hereditary kidney failure, is my child at risk
 
MaryG Views: 1,254
Published: 12 y
 
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Re: hereditary kidney failure, is my child at risk


Search for a "genetic counselor." They do exist, though you might need to travel a bit to find one, depending on where you live.

I have a friend who is blind with retinitis pigmentosa who at one time was married to someone else not carrying the retinitis pigmentosa problem. They were in Boston at the time and got a referral to a genetic counselor there, who came up with an exact probability for transferring the disease. They did decide to have children, had two, and one of the two inherited the problem. A probability is not a promise, and if I recall correctly, the chances were one in four that any one child would have the disease.

Your probabilities at this point, without genetic testing (if it's available for this particular problem), would be more complicated than theirs, as you don't know whether you have inherited the disease or not. If it's recessive, the chances are better that you didn't inherit it than that you did, if your father had no similar kidney problems/knew of no similar kidney problems running in the family. So your chances of inheriting it might be something like one in four, not one in two. If one in four, and if there's no family indication from your fiancée that the same problem exists in his family, then the chances for a single child inheriting a recessive disease might be about one in sixteen.

But it's a big deal to find out whether the trait is dominant or recessive. The prevalence of it showing up through two different other siblings' children suggests that it might more likely be a dominant gene for that problem. If it is, that would make it all the more important to find out through genetic testing, if a genetic test for it exists, whether or not you and your fiancée are carrying the gene.

I think you are wise not to go into this trusting only to crossed fingers.

Best of luck,
Mary
 

 
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