Who is at risk for inheriting the disease?
It’s recessively inherited, meaning both parents either have Wilson’s disease or are carriers of the abnormal gene that causes the disease. And both parents must have at least one copy of the gene for the child to inherit the disease. When does someone start to show symptoms of the disease? In Western countries, the most common age of onset is 21 years of age, but the age of onset is quite broad, ranging all the way from 15 to 45 for those with neurologic problems. The average liver presentation tends to be a little bit younger. In countries like India and the Far East, the age that Wilson’s disease begins to show tends to be much earlier, so it is often that young children have this disease.
