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| Single Gene
Disorders and Disability (SGDD) |
DBMD affects approximately 1 out of every 3,500 to 5,000 boys. With over 4
million births in the United States each year, about 400 to 600 boys with DBMD
are born every year. Girls rarely have DBMD.
About one-third of the time, there is someone else in the family that has DBMD,
such as a brother, uncle, or cousin. When a boy with DBMD has a relative with
the disease, he is said to have “familial” DBMD. But the other two-thirds of the
time, the boy is the first one in the family to have DBMD, and is said to have
“spontaneous” or “sporadic” DBMD. There are no known risk factors for these
spontaneous cases, so a boy with DBMD can be born into any family at any time.
Likewise, a girl can be a spontaneous carrier (a female who has one copy of the
DBMD mutation and therefore can pass it on to her sons). This means that a girl
who is a carrier of DBMD can be born into any family at any time.
Date: September 1, 2006
Content source: National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities
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