Inter-family marriages in Arab countries leads to genetic disorders

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/09/22/857

Inter-family marriages lead to genetic diseases: report Arabs suffer from high rate of gene disorders

Egyptian couples arrive at Cairo stadium for a collective wedding (File)

DUBAI (Loukia Papadopoulos)Despite the fact that it is widely practiced across the Middle East, marrying within the family might not be such a good idea, according to a report published Tuesday.

The report by the Dubai-based Center for Arab Genomic Studies (CAGS) said Arabs have one of the highest rates of genetic disorders mainly due to consanguinity, or marriages between close relatives.

	Prevalence of genetic diseases is very high in the UAE compared to the rest of the world, so it is a major concern. It also puts a lot of burden on the government financially. We need to prepare strategies with a special focus on genetics
Dr. Ghazi Omar Tadmouri, Assistant Director of CAGS

The genetic research institute found that around 63 percent of the genetic conditions found in Arabs, who often practice marriage between relatives, were related to consanguinity and warned the numbers were likely to rise as more research is conducted and more disorders discovered.

In the United Arab Emirates, a country with the fifth highest rate of inter-family marriages, there are currently more than 250 types of genetic diseases, the second highest after neighboring Oman.

“Prevalence of genetic diseases is very high in the UAE compared to the rest of the world, so it is a major concern. It also puts a lot of burden on the government financially. We need to prepare strategies with a special focus on genetics,” Dr. Ghazi Omar Tadmouri, assistant director of CAGS, said in a statement.

CAGS has so far completed studies in the UAE, Oman and Bahrain and plans to continue extensive research throughout the Arab world.

	The chance of genetic diseases increases with each consanguine marriage between defective gene carriers. A genetic pool with a long history of such marriages would indeed bread very interesting results
Dr. Anain Yvorra

Epidemic levels

Reports have found that several genomic diseases such as the blood disorder thalassaemia, diabetes, breast cancer and Down’s syndrome have reached epidemic levels, more than 100 cases per 100,000, in the three Gulf countries researched so far.

Ghazi said building the database was important as “it gives us a bird’s-eye view of each country on genetic diseases. Some are epidemic and some very rare,” he told the UAE paper The National.

Dr. Anain Yvorra, general director of France’s Eurobiomed, organizer of this year’s Montpellier conference on rare genetic diseases, told Al Arabiya the research done by CAGS would be of great interest to the field of genomic studies.

“The chance of genetic diseases increases with each consanguine marriage between defective gene carriers. A genetic pool with a long history of such marriages would indeed bread very interesting results.”

He noted however that although most of the diseases recognized by CAGS as epidemics in the UAE, Oman and Bahrain, are genetically related, breast cancer could also have many other triggers.

“Breast cancer could be environmental or emotional as well as genetic.”

The center funded by the Sheikh Hamadan Award for medical sciences states on its website that its vision is “to alleviate human suffering from genetic diseases in the Arab World.”