Hi,

Sassy I hear what you say, and I encourage Dawn and Matt to assess their risk and get really good advice.

My story is I have had 3 children, we lost one at 22 months and William my oldest is developing full blown AS, the bowel thing seems well controlled on diet......

My second wife has had a number of miscarrages since my disease has become more active, this is proabably an age thing, B27 -ve tend to go full blown as they hit 40. This was prior to starting any meds. The feedback we had was that the wiggles were probably damaged.

I would not want anyone to got through the pain that we have been through, loosing a child demised pregnancies and the financial and care stress we have been through. Pattra wife number 2 is quite affected by the loss of the last pregnancy.

I've had too much contact with families that have children with Colitis and some who have lost children to beleive it only happens to others.

Colitis in kids can be a life threatening disease and have chatostrophic health effects in childhood, including colon removal which is a huge operation for an adult, and developmental issues plus the risks of the side effects from the serious drugs the children need (I know Eric has had some rough times and I consider Chrons'more severe than Colitis in many cases).

AS as you know in childhood confers a very high risk of high disabilty in early adulthood. The bit that concerns me if I had more children is the risk of other auto immune disease as well as a birth defects. AS and Colitis are not the worst ones.......

Another factor in Dawn's case is both she and her husband have IBD as well as her husband having severe AS.

HLA-B27 is now only thought to contribute 16% to the subsectabilty to AS........as such much of what we have been told read over the years about HLA B27 being "the" gene is now up in the air.....the IBD genes are included in the list of other likely genes. However no one can refute the risk of B27 in AS and other associated auto immune diseases, but even if Matt and Dawn are both B27 -ve their risk of having a child who is Auto Immune is higher than the norm. Risk of one parent SpA/AS Bb27-ve is < 1%, however in Colitis it is 20%.

I think the one thing I would have changed, I would loved to have my children years earlier, when I was working and earning good money and much more active. however that does n;t fix my son.

Lke I said before statistics mean nothing if it happens to you/your children and I no longer walk around thinking thses things happen to other people.

David

The classic data on Inheritance risks in auto Immune disease

http://www.genetics.emory.edu/pdf/Emory_Human_Genetics_Autoimmune_Disorders.pdf


Some others:
http://www.living-better.com/understand_inheritance.shtml

I have seen IBD linked with damaged wiggles in men when the disease is active.

http://ibd.patientcommunity.com/links.cfm?parentcat_id=64&cat_id=64

Always got some good stuff, read the Mehtetraxate entry. 5ASA is the same as salazapyrine whithout the sulpha, I think the sulpha is linked to the mens wiggles getting culled back a bit, but it is supposed to be reversible if it does happen.

Infliximab is remicade(?)

David












Edited by davo on 12/15/04 09:48 PM (server time).

Edited by davo on 12/16/04 01:07 AM (server time).