How do people inherit familial Mediterranean fever?
Familial Mediterranean fever is almost always inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern, which means both copies of the gene in each cell have mutations. The parents of an individual with an autosomal recessive condition each carry one copy of the mutated gene, but they typically do not show signs and symptoms of the condition. In rare cases, this condition appears to be inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern, in which one copy of the altered gene in each cell is sufficient to cause the disorder and affected individuals often inherit the mutation from one affected parent. However, there are other possible explanations of this apparent pattern. A gene mutation that occurs frequently in a population may result in a disorder with autosomal recessive inheritance appearing in multiple generations in a family, a pattern that mimics autosomal dominant inheritance. If one parent has familial Mediterranean fever (with two mutations in the MEFV gene) and the other parent is an unaffected c
