Tay - Sachs Disease

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Tay - Sachs disease Tay- Sachs is a fatal disease that only happens to young children and mid. age adults, if they live that long. Tay-Sachs affects the brain. They get it through their parents. Children get it by inheriting it from their parents. Is a storage disease in which harmful quantities of a fatty substance called ganglioside build up in tissues and nerve cells in the brain. The condition is caused by insufficient activity of an enzyme. This disease is has various preventions, Symptoms, causes, forms, and treatments. There are two forms of Tay-Sachs. The most common form develops soon after a baby is born. It causes death early in the child’s life. In order for the child to get Tay- Sachs both of the parents have to be a carrier. If only one parent is a carrier than, this means that the child will have one gene that produces hex A and one that doesn't. The child will make enough hex A so that it won’t get the disease. Yet the child will end up being a carrier and pass it on to their children. Another form of Tay-Sachs is called LOTS (Late onset Tay- Sachs), it can start from puberty and when you are a mid-age adult. Depending on how serious the symptoms are, is how long the person will live. They may live as long as a normal person. In LOTS, the body makes small amounts of hex A. People with LOTS inherit the late-onset hex A, gene from both parents or inherit one late-onset gene and one inactive gene. Tay-Sachs disease results from defects in a gene on chromosome 15 that codes for production of the enzyme Hex-A. We all have two copies of this gene. If either or both Hex-A genes are active, the body produces enough of the enzyme to prevent the abnormal build-up of the ganglioside lipid. Carriers of Tay-Sachs, people who have one copy of the inactive gene along with one copy of the active gene - are healthy. They do not have Tay-Sachs disease but they

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