Go for genetic horoscope', not astrological horoscope': Study

Hyderabad: The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has advised young couples getting married in the same caste to go for ‘genetic horoscopes’ instead of astrological horoscopes.

CCMB director Dr Rakesh Misra said the genetic testing before marriage tells the mutations they are likely to have in order to prevent the disease causing genes carry forward to the next generation.

Researchers said that the stronger founder event in the groups having high Identity-By-Descent (IBD)  are a major of source of risk of recessive diseases and it is very different from that due to marriages among close relatives (consanguineous marriages).

Dr Rakesh Mishra said, “The future direction for the research is to sequence the population with high IBD score and identify the mutations. Then perform diagnosis and provide counselling to have a health future generation. Currently it costs around Rs 1 lakh each  for genetic testing. There is a 25 per cent change of offspring to get the recessive disease from each pair of parents in the high IBD group of a particular population. CCMB scientists quoted Dor Yeshorim: A community genetic testing program among Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews where matchmakers query the database whether the potential couple is ‘incompatible’ in the sense of both being carriers or recessive mutation at the same genet. 

Ashkenazi Jews have high prevalence of autosomal recessive diseases like Bloom syndrome, breast or ovarian cancer, congenital deafness, cystic fibrosis, haemophilia G, Gaucher disease, parkinson’s disease and several other syndromes.

Researchers said the strategy has reduced the rate of many recessive diseases to near-zero among the Orthodox Ashkenazi jews who use the service and a similar strategy could be effective in South Asians. The Finnish populations too have certain high prevalence of these diseases.