There were famous people who married their cousins such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Darwin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and more but if you are thinking of doing the same, better think again because a new study suggests that babies of these couples are at risk of being born with birth defects affecting the lungs or heart.
Eamon Sheridan of St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, UK, and his colleagues studied the birth defects of a Pakistani community in Bradford, England where consanguineous marriage, or marriage between blood relatives, is common.
They looked at the records of 11,000 babies born between 2007 and 2011. Among the population, three percent had birth defect. The birth defects they had identified were heart and lung defect, Down syndrome, and cleft palate.
The researchers were surprised with their conclusion because the percentage is higher than the British community. The occurrence of this condition in the white community is only 1.66 percent.
They also analyzed which among blood relative relationship is at high risk wherein they found out that 18 percent of the babies born were from parents who are first cousins. The frequency of first cousin marriages in the Pakistani community is also high at 38 percent.
The researchers did not make any recommendations to the Pakistani community due to social sensitivity and culture awareness even if they believe it should be addressed immediately.
This study proves that birth defects among babies are not just caused by smoking, alcohol drinking, and obesity during pregnancy. This opens another diagnostic question that medical experts should include on their interview; however, they have to ensure that they will not offend the patient if they do so.
The study was published on the July 4 issue of The Lancet.
Alan Bittles of the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia commended Sheridan’s team for being bold enough to reveal this conclusion since other studies refused to recognize the cultural, religious, social and economic concerns related to consanguineous marriages.
"Sheridan and colleagues deserve major credit for their complex, time-consuming, and socially sensitive study," Bittles said in CBC.
