Cystic Fibrosis Essay

Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disorder and can affect many parts of your body such as your lungs, pancreas, and other essential organs by clogging them with sticky mucus. The mucus is very harmful to people with the disease because they cannot break down their food and have very troublesome time breathing. Cystic Fibrosis is a very serious disorder, because you do not live that long and there is no cure.
Some symptoms of Cystic Fibrosis include very salty-tasting skin, persistent coughing, at times with phlegm, frequent lung infections, wheezing or shortness of breath, poor growth and weight gain, in spite of good appetite. The characteristics of cystic fibrosis do not really do much outside the body, but more damage inside of the body. Cystic Fibrosis does not happen to be that common because there are only one thousand new cases a year. Seventy percent of people are diagnosed by the age of two, and forty-five percent by the age of eighteen. In the United States, there are thirty-thousand people affected by CF. There are one in thirty-nine children in the United States affected. The affected gene, which is inherited from a child's parents, is a recessive gene. With recessive genes, children need to inherit two copies of the gene, one from each parent, in order to have the disease. If children inherit only one copy, they won't develop cystic fibrosis, but will be carriers and possibly pass the gene to their own children. Caucasians of Northern European ancestry have the greatest chance of being carriers of cystic fibrosis gene. Each child born to parents who are both CF carriers has a 1 in 4 chance of having the disease. Cystic fibrosis occurs most frequently in Caucasians of northern European descent, in whom the CF gene is most common — although people of other heritages can get the disease, too.
Cystic Fibrosis creates thick, sticky mucus in the lungs, pancreas, and other major organs that help you to break down food. The mucus is a very serious disorder because it clogs the lungs and pancreas and causes the carrier of the disease to be short of breath. Also, the mucus affects the sweat glands and a male’s reproductive system. In the reproductive system, the thickened secretions can cause an obstacle and affect the development and function of the sexual organs.
Currently, there is no cure for CF, only treatments aimed at minimizing the severity of the symptoms and improving quality of life. Treatment goals usually involve activities to loosen and remove excess mucus from the lungs, prevent lung infections and blockages in the gastrointestinal tract, and to provide adequate nutrition with specialized diets. There is no way at the moment to prevent acquiring cystic fibrosis because it is an inherited disease. But because of that reason there are many tests that are available to see if you have cystic fibrosis such as laboratory tests, imaging tests, and lung infection tests. Laboratory Tests: Newborn screening test- This test checks a blood sample for a particular component that is commonly elevated in babies who have cystic fibrosis. Other tests are needed to confirm the

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Essay On Cystic Fibrosis