# WHAT DO I DO I HAVE UC AND A 5 MONTH OLD CAN HE HAVE IT TO BECAUSE I DO



## 21002 (Sep 3, 2006)

Ok i really need answers please any one that can help I have UC i have had it for 3 years now and my wife resently had a baby boy he is 5 months old and i was wonder is it for sure that my son will have UC because I do?????? anybody that can help please


----------



## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

He has a slightly higher risk than kids born to people without any family history of UC.It is not a for sure 100% chance he will get it. Even if he got the genes from you that make it more likely to get it he may or may not get it.There are genetic and environmental factors involved. K.


----------



## 21002 (Sep 3, 2006)

the crazy thing is its not in my blood line im the only one in my family that has UC


----------



## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Each set of immune genetic sets (and these can be mixed from generation to generation) has a certain probability of getting an autoimmune disease. You may have just drawn the short end of the stick and been the only one in recent history to do so.The environment also plays a role. You can have the genes and never be triggered by the environment to get the disease.It isn't like blue vs brown eyes, it is more like height or heart disease where you can get all the short genes or all the tall genes and be much shorter or taller than the rest of your family. Also environment plays a role in height as well. You may have a lot of will be tall genes, but grow up during a time of famine that will make you end up short even though you should have been tall based on genes alone.K.


----------



## 21002 (Sep 3, 2006)

you kinda completely confused me







i am really really lost and im sorry if im making you frustrated but I am really worried about the well being of my son


----------



## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Immuno-genetics is really confusing.Every person has a different set of genes that they make the immune system from. This is why some people get sick from some things easier than others. It just depends on which lets say 100 genes you got out of the lets say 1000 genes that are in the entire population.You get some from Mom and some from Dad and what you get is a mix of what they got from their Mom and Dad. Getting an autoimmune disease is more common in people who get certain mixes. You can have the bad genes and not get an autoimmune disease.Depending on which particular genes you get and what particular environmental triggers you run into a person has a certain chance of getting an autoimmune disease.If you are related to someone with it, especially close like Mom or Dad or sister more than distant cousin, you might have the same genes they have and be at higher risk than other people.Both genes and environment play a role in this. The "risky" genes may be in your family, but no one had enough of them, or no one ran into the right environmental trigger, so no one ever got this before you got unlucky.It has a genetic componant, but genes are not the whole story.It is like heart disease or diabetes. It isn't like some diseases where if you have the bad copy of the gene 100% of the time you will have the disease. In those cases it is what you eat and how you exercise and all of that environment that determines if your bad genes cause heart disease or diabete or not.It is more like if you have the "wrong" set of immune genes you will have a 10% chance of getting sice where someone with a "right" set of immune genes will have a 1% chance of getting it (these aren't the real numbers, but I don't feel like looking up the exact ones, but these illustrate the point). So most people who get UC are likely to have the "wrong" set. Now the rub is that this set might be good for protecting you from some other disease, so it might be good to have depending on what infections you get along the way.Something in the environment has to trigger your immune system to attack the body. Basically it tried to attack something else and wound up attacking you. The chance of that happening is in part determined by which of the immune system genes you got. If you got a lot of potential body attacking genes you will be more likely to get it than if you had less of these genes. So basically I'm just trying to say you don't have to worry or feel guilty about passing it on to your kids. I can't sit here and know if you passed the bad genes on, nor can we be certain even if you did pass it on that he would ever have a problem with it.Every single parent passes on some gene that makes the kid more likely to get something.K.


----------

