What is the relationship between hereditary diseases and congenital diseases and familial diseases?

Hereditary diseases refer to diseases in which pathogenic genes from close relatives are passed on to offspring, and the pathogenic genes lead to abnormal morphology, structure, physiological functions and biochemical processes in offspring. Hereditary diseases do not necessarily have clinical symptoms after birth, but may appear later, while some diseases have clinical symptoms after birth, but they are not hereditary diseases.

Congenital disease refers to the disease that the fetus has formed in the mother and exists at birth. Congenital diseases can be inherited or not. If there are genetic factors involved in the formation of a disease in the mother, then this disease is a genetic disease; If the mother is influenced by external environmental factors during pregnancy, the fetal disease belongs to congenital disease rather than hereditary disease, because it will not be passed on to future generations.

Familial disease means that the disease is familial, but some familial diseases are not all genetic diseases. Gene transmission is the basis of genetic diseases. Because the same family consists of several people, because their blood source is the same as that of a predecessor, they may share a certain pathogenic gene. Therefore, the occurrence of the disease may be familial.

However, different members of the same family live in the same living environment and conditions, which can lead to different members of this family suffering from the same disease, and can also show the familial nature of the disease, but it is not hereditary. For example, the onset of night blindness is often familial, but it is not hereditary, but due to the lack of vitamin A caused by the family's dietary conditions.

Extended data:

Clinical characteristics of hereditary diseases;

1. Patients have special phenotypes (usually accompanied by mental retardation) and chromosomal abnormalities.

2. Under the premise of excluding the influence of environmental factors, there are patients among relatives, and a certain proportion of them are sick.

3. There are no patients among unrelated members (such as husband and wife).

4. Patients have specific onset age, course characteristics and clinical manifestations.

5. Among twins, the comorbidity rate of identical twins is higher than that of fraternal twins.

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