Hereditary KC

[munster]

I think I may have hereditary KC.

My mums' cousins' oldest son (my generation) whos 40 now was diagonsed with it 14 years ago, which is now advanced.
My brother has very mild KC, and I have mild to advanced KC.

There maybe another family member on my mums' side who has KC also.

That's a lot of KC in one blood line for a coincidence, don't you think?

[Andrew MacLean]

Not necessarily.

Any random distribution will produce clusters. Indeed, one way in which universities try to detect where students have been a little inventive in the findings of research is that their distribution had no clusters at all.

I work in a town that has a very much higher than 'normal' incidence of keratoconus. This means that my GP has loads of experience in dealing with the condition, but his several patients with KC are not related. He maybe feels a little oppressed by the very high concentration of people with this condition in his practice while other GPs in neighbouring towns of similar size can go their whole career without ever encountering the condition.

One area of research that may open again the debate about heredity is the work being done on 'dissonant identical twins'. These are twins who are genetically identical but who do not appear similar and who present with different profiles of genetic disease.

Every good wish.

Andrew

[Lynn White]

Its an interesting question....

There is definitely a genetic connection, as research is pointing up many genes that have a connection to keratoconus. Additionally, it does tend to cluster in areas which are isolated and have a restricted gene pool.

There is new research here that may be of interest to you

Lynn