The Montreal Chapter of Dysautonomia in conjunction with the Montreal Jewish Genetic Disorder Fund are encouraging people to become more aware about genetic testing.
Everyone carries genetic flaws they might pass on to their children. Most of the time the flaw passes harmlessly and silently from one generation to the next. Until two of these people with the identical flaw have children together and by chance they both pass on that particular flaw. This double flaw gives the person who has it a genetic disorder that affects their health.
FD is one of these disorders. The "Harmless and Silent" group is about 1 in 27 in the Ashekenazic Jewish population. This group of people are called carriers of this disorder. They have no symptoms and common blood test show nothing.
FD is not the only disorder of this type. There are many of them in the same population. Each has its own set of health problems. Each of these has their own figure of 1 in some number. If you add up the top ten of the "1 in" numbers it comes out that the Ashekenazic population has 1 in 5 chance of carrying something.
The "Harmless and Silent" group in Montreal alone could be thousands of people. And that is just for the Ashekenazic group. Sephardic group have there own top ten list that over laps but is not identical. (FD would not make the top ten)
There is one primary tool to identify who is a carrier. It is genetic testing. The mechanics of a test are simple.
What you do with the results can require some thought. The medical community have professional genetic counselors who can give more details to this issue.
One of our partner organization, The Montreal Jewish Genetic Disorder Fund has sponsored a web site that has some more detail. Goto www.testjgd.com
