Importance of knowing your Genotype before marriage

It’s of great importance that intending couples should know their genotype before marriage so as to reduce the birth of children with sickle cell.

I would suggest that one of the questions you have to ask on a date should be:

What is your Genotype?

Now this brings us to the question:

what is Genotype?

Genotype is the genetic makeup of an individual with genomic sequence.

Genotype can also mean a collection of genes and these genes are passed from parents to children. Humans are born with two Alleles(an allele represents a gene) each allele is inherited from each parents (father and mother).

Most people especially the uneducated ones are so ignorant of the importance of knowing their genotype and after marriage if they are not genetically compatible their offsprings suffer for it as some drop down with sickle cell. 

There are four genotypes in humans which are: AA,AS,SS and AC. The SS and AC are abnormal and known as the carriers or sickle cell although the AC genotype is not common.

Below are the possible outcome of offsprings produced when each genotypes are combined together:

AA+AA=AA, AA, AA, AA

AA+AS= AA, AS, AA, AS

AA+SS= AS, AS, AS, AS

AA+AC= AA, AA, AA, AC

AS+AS= AA, AS, AS, SS

AS+SS= AS, SS, SS, SS

AS+AC= AA, AC, AS, SC

SS+SS= SS, SS, SS, SS

AC+SS= AS, AS, SS,SS

AC+AC= AA, AC, AC, SS

For the health safety of your children, it is important to know your genotype before commiting into a relationship because the moment love sets in people would want to compromise and get married still knowing the implications. Some may say God can help us which is still okay but why put God to test when you can avoid being in such situation.

There’s also another method to change a genotype, it’s called the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). This is really expensive to do.

I urge everyone to know their genotype today because having a sickled cell child is not easy to take care of as they always drop down with different types of sickness. Do the right thing today.

Stay safe.