Everyone in life is faced with genetic diseases that they may have the chance of inheriting at some point in time in their life. After taking a look into my family tree and what my family member’s health problems were I realized that one serious disease that I have a chance of developing at some point in my life is Cystic fibrosis. Many people are familiar with cystic fibrosis or have heard about it at some point in time in their life. According to an article that I read Cystic fibrosis is a buildup of thick, sticky mucus that can damage many of the body’s organs (“Genetic Home Reference”, 2012).
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease, and it is inherited by autosomal recessive, which means that there must be two copies of an abnormal gene and it has to be present in order for the disease or trait to develop. While I was learning about autosomal recessive, I learned that gene’s come in pairs and both pairs must be defective to cause a disease. As I looked deeper into Cystic fibrosis I learned that it affects the respiratory system and also the digestive system. This disease is a defect in the chromosome 7, chromosome 7 is also known as CFTR or cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator.
Like most diseases these days the way it affects someone or shows in someone depends on the severity of the disease. For instance, the way cystic fibrosis shows in a child may be completely different compared to someone in there later ages. For the most part the symptoms are always the same for both the respiratory and the digestive system. When it comes to the respiratory system the symptoms that you need to look for is a constant cough that produces a lot of mucus, Wheezing or feeling breathlessness.
Always having a stuffy nose and not being able to exercise the way you may want too is also a symptoms due to the respiratory system. As you can tell from the symptoms that I have listed associated with the respiratory system, and this system is very important because when you have cystic fibrosis, all the mucus blocks the tubes that are carrying air in and out of the lungs.
The mucus can cause the digestive system tubes to be blocked, which will not allow the enzymes to travel from the Inherited Diseases 3 pancreas to the small intestines. If you ever question if you could possible suffer from this the signs that you would look for would be, not growing the way that you should be, because you are not receiving all the enzymes you need to properly grow. Also another symptom is either constipation or even having greasy or foul smelling stools.
I think that I have a greater chance than just anybody because cystic fibrosis is an inherited disease and it runs in the family. Considering my grandmother had cystic fibrosis there is a high chance of my father developing it and also having it for some time of his life, and then there’s a chance of me having it as well. I figured out how cystic fibrosis ran in my family by making a family tree and listing medical conditions of family members and going as far back as possible.
One of the problems that I ran into when I was making my family tree was not only was my family small but half of my family on my father’s side I knew nothing about. Also another problem I ran into was the part of my mother’s family that I did know about they did not really believe in going to the doctors, or trusting what the doctors said. So the medical issues that they could have had, we know nothing about.
The disappointing thing about this genetic disorder is that if I was to have children they would eventually suffer from the same thing that I was possess. It would already been know because of the repetitive pattern it has within my family tree. Cystic Fibrosis is a very serious disease and after completing a family tree I discovered that there is a big chance of me inheriting the disease. There are actually many people who get diagnosed everyday with this disease, and there are also treatments for it. When you consider the odds of the genetics and the type of disease everyone in life faces a struggle when they realize that they have a high chance of inheriting a genetic disease.
The only thing you can do is research, and study the disease and learn the symptoms just in case you may need them in the future. Inherited Diseases 4 When I went to the KU Library and completed the two reference searches, I found an article about the genetics of cystic fibrosis and another one about the testing of cystic fibrosis and the treatment that is available for it. The articles provided a lot of information about the severity of the disease and gave a lot of informative things. I learned a lot of information about this genetic disease from the search I did within the KU Library.
?The search terms that I used was “Cystic Fibrosis Genetics” ?I actually did not use any combination of search terms when I was searching in the KU Library. ?Using the KU Library gave me more results for the type of information that I was searching for. Using the Library it provided me with different types of information about the topic that I was searching about. ?No I did not refine any of my searches. Inherited Diseases 5.
Reference Page: http://ghr. nlm. nih. gov/condition/cystic-fibrosis http://www. mayoclinic. org/diseases-conditions/cystic-fibrosis/basics/symptoms/con- 20013731.