Tay Sachs Disease Awareness
| A simple blood test can determine if you are a carrier of Tay Sachs Disease. |
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1. Tay Sachs Disease - a genetic disease carried by 1 in 26 Sydney Ashkenazi Jews, which will kill children born with the disease by the age of 5.... 2. Bone Marrow Matching - join the Bone Marrow Registry to have the potential to donate bone marrow (if you are a perfect match with someone dying of leukemia) and SAVE A LIFE. A match occurs 1 in 50,000 in the general community but 1 in 10,000 in the Jewish community... |
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Tays Sachs Disease is an inherited incurable disease of the central nervous system. Its symptoms first appear when a baby is about 6 months old. The baby stops smiling and developing through the normal developmental stages. Blindness and paralysis follow within the next four years resulting in the child's death by the age of five years. Most babies die within the first two years. Tays Sachs Disease is an autosomal recessive disease that is the result of chance inheritance. A carrier is normal and healthy and could thus be ignorant of his/her carrier status. Tay Sachs disease is not infectious and therefore cannot be caught. It is only if both partners are carriers of the faulty gene for Tay Sachs Disease that a child can be born with the condition. A blood test can determine whether or not a person is a carrier and if a couple is 'at risk' of having a child with Tay Sachs Disease. |
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