How long do cystic fibrosis sufferers live to?
Cystic fibrosis, or ‘mucoviscidosis’, is a hereditary disease. A defective gene results in an inability to transport salt in certain kinds of cells in the lungs and in the pancreas. It is the most common hereditary disease in Western Europe. Why does a person get cystic fibrosis? Cystic fibrosis is an ‘autosomal recessive’ disease, which means that both parents have a gene defect that they pass on to their offspring. But the child will have cystic fibosis only if it inherits both of the defective copies of the gene. There is a 1:4 chance of this happening. In the other three out of four chances the child will inherit a normal copy of the gene and be unaffected by cystic fibrosis. The exact mechanism is not known, but the altered salt transport severely thickens the mucus in the respiratory passages. This makes the respiratory passages more susceptible to bacterial infection, most frequently Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas. How can I tell if I have cystic fibrosis? The symptoms are usual
