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Rett Syndrome Analysis

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Have you ever known someone who was diagnosed with Rett syndrome? First, you have to know what it is. Rett syndrome is a genetic disease that causes the inability to use muscles used for movement and affects their ability to speak. Females are the only ones that can contract the disease. Every nine minutes, one girl is born with Rett syndrome. Although Rett disease is a well known disease, it wasn’t always like that. A neurodevelopmental pediatrician, Andreas Rett, was the first to recognize the syndrome and promoting awareness in Europe in 1965. To dismay, Rett wrote his book in German and wasn’t circulated circulated throughout the region. Years later, Begnt Hagberg, a Swedish neurologist, had seen some repeated symptoms in his patients. In the late 1970s, Hagberg attended a meeting of neurologists, “Bengt raised this clinical issue and was informed of Andy Rett’s publications in Vienna regarding girls with similar hand stereotypies, as well as a recent publication of Andy’s in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology that described RTT but associated it with hyperammonemia.”(Percy, 2014). Hagberg meant with Rett and wrote his paper about the syndrome. Now written in …show more content…

Babies born with Rett disease don’t show symptoms for the first six months of their lives. At around twelve to eighteen months is when they start showing symptoms. The most common symptoms are slowed growth, unusual hand and eye movements, decrease of movement and communication, breathing and heartbeat irregularities, seizures, and scoliosis (which is the curving of the spine). Rett disease is contracted by a mutation of the X chromosome so to correctly diagnose the disease, doctors perform blood tests. Rett syndrome is common in every group. “Current estimates suggest that Rett syndrome occurs in one out of every 10,000 to 15,000 girls born and affects 1 in 10,000 to 22,000 females in the U.S” (how many people…,

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