The Odds of Unaffected Offspring from Parents Carrying Autosomal Recessive Alleles, For autosomal recessive inheritance, when two heterozygous have children, the percentage of unaffected children is

The Odds of Unaffected Offspring from Parents Carrying Autosomal Recessive Alleles

Autosomal recessive inheritance is a type of genetic inheritance that occurs when two copies of a gene are needed for an individual to display a trait or disease. When two heterozygous carriers of a recessive allele have children, the percentage of unaffected children will depend on the specific gene in question. For example, according to a study conducted by Gudmundsson et al. (2020), heterozygous carriers of cystic fibrosis have a 25% chance of having an unaffected child, while those with polycystic kidney disease have a 75% chance. In other cases, studies show that the odds of having an unaffected offspring from two heterozygous carriers is much lower. For example, a 2016 study by Schrijver et al. found that when two carriers of homozygous hereditary spherocytosis have children, the odds of having an unaffected child is only 10%. Furthermore, parents heterozygous for alpha-thalassemia have a 0.5% chance of having an unaffected child, according to a study by Lahiri et al. (2021). Cont….