• Question: what causes people to be down syndrome ?

    Asked by erinmason30 to Anouk, Chris, Judith, Leisha, Seyyed on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Chris Kettle

      Chris Kettle answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Down syndrome is nearly always caused by Trisomy 21, that is where an individual has an extra copy of chromosome 21. This extra copy can be inherited from mum or dad or coul djust be a cell division error after the egg was formed.

      Very good use of Down syndrome rather than Down’s syndrome. It is a misconception that it is downs syndrome – so well done you!

    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      It’s caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. How that extra copy leads to all of the different symptoms is not entirely clear, but there’s a lot of research being done to try and understand it properly. It’s a complicated problem because there are several hundred genes on chromosome 21, so an extra copy of all of them.

Comments