Question: If the illness is hereditary can you get rid of it or is it imposible?

Elaine Duncan answered on 17 Jun 2020:

Hi! Some hereditary diseases have a strong genetic component, meaning that we know exactly which individual protein is causing the disease and can usually trace this back through family history (eg sickle cell anemia, colour blindness, Huntington’s disease etc). In these cases, there are often ways to treat the symptoms, but the mutation is in the patient’s DNA so is usually not possible to remove. For a very small number of diseases gene therapy can be used to repair the mutation in the DNA, but this is very difficult and expensive to do, so is still very rare.

Many hereditary diseases however are caused by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. This means that a person can have some gene mutations which could increase the risk of them having the disease, but is also strongly affected by a person’s diet, exercise, age etc. Common examples of these include heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc. In these cases, even if a person has inherited some genetic risk factors, they will not necessarily get the disease. Similarly, a person can have no genetic risk factors but may still suffer from the disease if they have an unhealthy lifestyle.

Hope this answers your question!