5 Rare diseases that often attack children as a result of incest

Incest, aka inbreeding, is a system of marriage between two people who are "blood", aka still in the same family line. For many people, the thought of having sex with a sibling or younger sibling, or with parents and children alone, is a terrible nightmare. But that does not mean this is impossible, as evidenced by so many historical records that report cases like this.

Incest is forbidden in nearly every human culture, and it is not without reason. Offspring from inbreeding have a very high risk of suffering from a rare genetic disease.

Various health problems that the offspring of incest may have

The incest child will have the genetic code of DNA that does not vary because it inherits DNA chains derived from the father and mother that are very similar. Lack of variation in DNA can weaken your immune system so that you cannot fight disease properly.

One study found that 40 percent of children from inbreeding between two first-degree individuals (nuclear families) were born with abnormalities in the form of congenital physical defects or severe intellectual disabilities.

Being involved in inbreeding does not mean that you will definitely get genetic disease or illness. You just have a higher chance of various health problems. And, the more incest history in one family tree, the higher the risk.

1. Albinism

Albinism is a condition in which your body lacks melanin, a dye for hair, eyes and skin. An albino (the name for those who have albinism) tends to have light eye color, and very pale skin and hair that is almost milky white, even if they are of dark ethnic origin.

Albinism is an autosomal recessive disease, which means that when two people with the same genetic code reproduce, their chances of inheriting it are increased.

Not all albinos are a product of inbreeding. But the practice of incest between close cousins, siblings and biological parents is at a very high risk of inheriting this problem in later offspring.

The reason is, it is highly likely that your partner (who is your brother or sister, for example) carries the same type of defective gene because it was passed down from both of your parents. This means that both of you carry a defective melanin-making gene and have a 50 percent chance of passing the defective gene to your child, so that your next offspring has a 25 percent chance of albinism - which seems trivial, but this figure is actually very high.

2.Fumarase Deficiency (FD)

Fumarase deficiency (FD), also known as polygamist's down, is a disorder that specifically affects the nervous system of the brain.

These birth defects cause people to suffer from tonic-clonic seizures, mental retardation, and often have physical abnormalities - from cleft lip, club foot, to scoliosis. Mental retardation experienced is classified as very severe, IQ only reaches 25, loss of certain parts of the brain, unable to sit and / or stand, language skills are very minimal or even zero.

The incest child who has FD may also have microcephaly. Microcephaly is a rare neurological condition characterized by the size of a baby's head that is significantly smaller than the head of other children of the same age and sex. In addition, it also has an abnormal brain structure, severe developmental delays, muscle weakness (hypotonia), failure to thrive, swelling of the liver and spleen, excess red blood cells (polycythemia), certain types of cancer, and / or lack of white blood cells ( leukopenia).

No effective treatment is available for phumatase deficiency. Individuals with FD usually survive only a few months. Only a handful of FD survivors live long enough to reach young adulthood.

3. Habsburg Jaw

Habsburg Jaw, also known as Habsburg Lip and Austrian Lip, is a congenital physical defect characterized by a protruding lower jaw followed by extreme thickening of the lower lip, and an unusually large tongue size - which usually causes the sufferer to drool excessively.

In the modern medical world, Habsburg Jaw is known as mandibular prognathism. The malocclusion (upper and lower jaw irregularities) caused by this condition causes defect in jaw function, discomfort in chewing, digestive problems, and difficulty speaking so that it is difficult to understand. Individuals who have this condition also report mental retardation and motor function that is almost zero.

The earliest traces of the Habsburg Jaw are believed to have come from a Polish aristocratic family, and the first person known to have this condition was Maximillian I, the Holy Roman emperor who ruled from 1486 to 1519. Ancient royal families often practiced inbreeding to protect the pure blood of the aristocracy on the family tree. .

4. Hemophilia

Hemophilia is not specifically the result of inbreeding, but incest is seen as the cause of the high incidence of this congenital disease in many European royal families.

If there is a woman suffering from this disease in your family, then inbreeding in the family should be suspected as a risk factor. Hemophilia is a condition caused by a defect in the genes that allow blood to clot.

Hemophilia is an example of X-linked disease, because the defective gene is a gene from the X-chromosome. Females have two pairs of X chromosomes while males have only one X chromosome from their mother. A man who inherits a copy of the defective hemophilia gene will develop the disease, while the female offspring must inherit two pairs of defective genes to develop hemophilia. The offspring of the incest inherits two copies of the defective gene that was passed down from the mother.

5. Philadelphoi

The word "Philadelphoi" which means "brotherly love" comes from ancient Greek, used as a nickname given to the brothers of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe who were involved in an incestuous relationship. Even so, Philadelphoi is not an official medical condition and is different from Philadelphia Chromosome (Ph) disease.

The royal families of ancient Egypt were almost always required to marry their siblings, and this was the case in almost every dynasty. Not only sibling marriages, but also "double niece marriages", where a man marries a girl whose parents are the brother or sister of the man. This tradition of inbreeding was preserved because they believed that the god Osiri married his own sister, Iris, to preserve the purity of the offspring. Tutankhamen, aka King Tut, was the result of an incestuous relationship between siblings. It is also suspected that his wife, Ankhesenamun, was either his own younger brother (whether biological or adopted) or nephew.

As a result of this inbreeding, the rate of stillbirths is high in the royal family, as are birth defects and congenital genetic disorders. King Tut himself has a variety of conditions resulting from limited variations in the genetic code of genes from his parents' incest relationships.

King Tut reportedly had an elongated skull shape, cleft lip, tonggos (the upper front teeth protruding from the lower front teeth), club foot, loss of a bone in his body, and scoliosis - all the "packages" of this condition caused, or it is made worse, by incest intercourse.