MS running in the family

[Sailorsong]

Earlier when I was doing a reply to someone's post I realized that in my family MS tends to be on the male side. Dad, brother, & cousin. And even for the one female ( niece) she is my brother's child. My cousin was also my dad's brother's son.

This has gotten me to wondering about the, though slight, relationship of better chance of getting MS if someone else in the family has MS. While women tend to get MS more than men maybe the key is in the male genes? After all women are both X & Y while men have only X chromizones.  So my thinking is that it might be a recessive male gene that is getting turned on at some point in our lives that causes MS.

So those that have MS running in your family does it tend to follow a male line or female line of decent?

Dennis

[Mike_Shuswap]

Because of the high amount of MS on my Mom's side we (my siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) participate in a blind study looking for genetic links in MS.

So far this has just invloved blood samples and medical history, but more may be rquested of us in the future.

To answer your question, most of the pwMS in my family are female.

Mike

[tingletingle]

Hi Dennis,

I think there is some compelling scientific evidence to suggest that there is a hereditary link - kids of parents with MS have a 40 -80 times higher chance of developing MS.

One research study suggested that there was twice the risk from the mother side but then another contradicted this. So who know?

http://www.overcomingmultiplesclerosis.org/About-MS/What-is-MS/Genetics-of-MS/

Blessings
Alex

[JaneK1975]

It's an interesting question, Dennis. I think some research has been done in this area. I found the following:

"In offspring of concordant parent–child families with MS who are at high risk of inheriting increased numbers of susceptibility genes there is no evidence for a parent of origin effect distorting sex ratios in affected offspring"

Citation: http://www.neurology.org/content/57/2/290.abstract

Of course, "no evidence of..." doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist. That study is 10 years old. Maybe other scientists will research the question further in the future...

- Jane

[Sailorsong]

Yes you are right I got that backwards. Surprising how much we forget over the years. :)

That bit of info invalidates my whole theory. But it still would be interesting to know if it does seem to follow male vs female lines of decedent.

Dennis

[Valkyrie568]

Actually men are XY and women are XX. I don't know about the specifics other than that.

I had been wondering about the logistics of the higher likelyhood of females getting it, when if it is carried on the x gene, we should have a better chance of not getting it.