Consanguinity among parents of Iranian deaf children

الملخص EN

Background : It seems that there is a relationship between consanguinity and profound hearing loss but there is little data about the association of consanguinity and hearing loss in Iran.

Objectives : The aim of this study is to demonstrate the causes of profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss among Iranian samples who are candidates for cochlear implantation.

Methods : This study was retrospective, analytical, and designed to collect information about profound hearing impaired cases referred to the Baqiyatallah Cochlear implantation center using enumeration.

A total of 310 children with profound hearing impairments participated in this study.

They were aged from 6 months to 4 years old.

The study was done between January 2007 and April 2009.

Chi-square tests were used to show whether there was any statistical difference between the incidence of marital consanguinity of their parents and the normal population.

Results : Sixty-five percent of those 310 children had parents who had married with their relatives.

Of the 203 (65 %) parents that had consanguineous marriages, 132 were first cousins, which includes the children of two brothers (37 [11.8 %] patrilateral parallel cousins), the children of two sisters (38 [12.2 %] multi-lateral parallel cousins), or the children of a brother and a sister (57 [18.3 %] cross cousins).

Fifty-four (17.4 %) of the parents were second cousins and 17 (5.2 %) were beyond second cousins.

Also, hearing loss etiology was obvious in 237 (76.3 %) of the patients with profound hearing loss but was unknown in 73 (23.7 %).

Hereditary was identified as the most common cause in 33% of the cases.

Conclusions : Our data demonstrated a 65 % occurrence of consanguineous marriage among the parents of deaf children, which is statistically different from the percentage of consanguineous marriage among Iranian population (38 %).

This indicates an obvious relationship between severe hearing loss and consanguineous marriage.

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