Consanguinity and common adult diseases in Israeli Arab communities

Consanguinity has a deleterious effect with regard to congenital malformation and rare autosomal recessive diseases; however, little information exists on its role in multifactorial common adult morbidity. We investigated the effects of consanguinity on the prevalence of common diseases in adulthood, including diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, bronchial asthma, and duodenal ulcer. As part of a larger study investigating the inbreeding coefficient in the Israeli-Arab community, we distributed questionnaires to parents of 4,100 second-grade students in 158 randomly chosen schools. Among the 3,772 responders (92%), 34.8% of the students' fathers and 31% of their mothers were found to be born to consanguineous matings. There was no difference in the prevalence (males, females) between the offspring of consanguineous versus non-consanguineous matings for diabetes mellitus (consanguinity: 4.3%, 1.5% vs. non-consanguinity: 2.9%, 1.6%) myocardial infarction (2.7%, 0.03% vs. 2.3%, 0.03%), bronchial asthma (2.4%, 2.0% vs. 3.7%, 2.3%), or duodenal ulcer (7.0%, 3.0% vs. 7.8%, 2.9%), respectively. The study suggests that even in a population with a high rate of consanguinity, there is no significant increase in the prevalence of these common adult diseases.