What Should I Do if My 4 Year Old Has Symptoms of Cystic Fibrosis?
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at
10:50 am
Mallory asked:
My 4 year old son has had breathing problems and been hospitalized twice for croup, pneumonia once and constantly has a deep cough. His father is a carrier for cystic fibrosis and im not. Should he be tested? His half brother has been diagnosed with CF.
Tagged with: Breathing Problems • Cough • Symptoms Of Cystic Fibrosis
Filed under: Cystic Fibrosis
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Absolutely, you may be a carrier eventhough you have tested negative, so your son should have a work-up including genetic testing as well as a sweat test. You need to be certain to go to a CF Care Center.
The genetic tests that are done for carrier status, such as you, don’t test for all mutations, so there is a significant chance, maybe as much as 20%, that you have a mutation that the tests don’t recognize, or that has not been documented elsewhere.
Mallory,
If you are sure your husband is just a carrier and you are not, then I don’t believe you need to test your son, as it would be impossible he has CF. Given there are currently over 1500 CF mutations, however, and it’s VERY expensive to be tested for all of them, getting him tested might be warranted and prudent. It’s very inexpensive to have a sweat test confirm/deny the diagnosis.
Paul
ask a doctors opinion
YES!!!!! You should most definitely get your son tested! You can do a little something for the time being, to help put your mind at ease until you can get him in, I’m not sure how it would work in a 4y/o though, but, cystic fibrosis babies tend to have a salty taste to them if you kiss/lick the baby’s head. Does your son have an excessive amount of phlegm?
Yes. He has a high chance of acquiring it since his dad is a carrier for it.
This is a good website to read info about cystic fibrosis
Assuming you are certain about not being a carrier, and have been test for it. Then there is absolutely zero chance of him having cystic fibrosis.
Every person has two copies of a gene, one inherited from each parent. If a person has one normal CF gene and one abnormal CF gene, then that person is a carrier of CF. Having only one abnormal copy of the CF gene is not enough to cause the disease, so a CF carrier will not have any symptoms.
If both parents are carriers of an abnormal CF gene, then there is a chance that each parent will pass the abnormal gene on to there child. Having two copies of the abnormal CF gene results in CF.