How healthy or sick are we, genetically speaking?

The current consensus estimates for natural prevalence of genetic diseases are about 100/104 live births for autosomal dominant and X-linked diseases, 25/104 for autosomal recessive diseases, and 40/104 for diseases attributable to constitutional chromosomal anomalies. The prevalence of congenital abnormalities is of the order of about 400-500/104 live births; about 50 percent of these are multi factorial, 6 percent due to mutant genes, 5 percent due to chromosomal anomalies, 6 percent due to environmental factors, and the remainder are of unknown aetiology. Heritable conditions of adult life, such as schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, or epilepsy, are common. The total prevalence of some 26 such conditions has been estimated to be 6500/104 for the population of Hungary. This is the number of diseases per 104 individuals that will occur over a 70 year life span. The common multi factorial diseases result in about 96000 years of potentially impaired life per 104 of the population. The growing number of people who can be expected to live into old age will result in more people suffering the effects of multi factorial diseases in the future. (L.L.) (Tab.)