About Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic Fibrosis is a disease caused by an inherited genetic defect and is one of the most common recessive genetic diseases. CF affects approximately 70,000 children and young adults world wide. It occurs in approximately one of every 3,300 births and 1,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. As such it is not contagious and there is no risk of catching CF from another person.

People with CF suffer from chronic lung problems and digestive disorders, it also causes other difficulties such as Cirrhosis of the liver, malnutrition, diabetes and serious lung infections. Now that the digestive problem can be controlled, due to a better understanding of the disease, the lung impairment accounts for more than 90 percent of the disability to the patients.

For many years the cause of CF was a mystery, today, advances in medical study have made it clearer. Humans have a gene encoded in their DNA which makes a special protein called CFTR. If a child inherits a defective copy of this protein from each parent they will have CF. Parents with a single defective CFTR protein are referred to as carriers. Each time two carriers conceive a child, there is a 25% chance that the child will have CF, a 50% chance that the child will be a carrier and a 25% chance that the child will be a non-carrier.

Despite major improvements in management and diet over the years, Cystic Fibrosis remains a truly horrendous life threatening disease. There is a lifelong impact on the parents, siblings, and close relatives of the CF child, to say nothing of the suffering of the child him or herself.