Multiple Children with Type 1 Diabetes

Both of our children are Type 1. My son, age 10 was dxd 5 yrs ago and my daughter, 16 was dxd in November. My sister's son , age 8 was dxd a yr ago.

 

Is it more prevalent for genes to be passed on by dad?

Just curious - is it more prevalent for diabetes to be passed on from Dads?

My husband type 1 and my son type 1.

What do people here experience?

 

At diagnosis, I was told that it was. This was 4.5 years ago and I don't have it written down anywhere, but I'm sure they told me that if a father has D then his child has a 12% chance of developing it, but if a mother has D the chance is only 5%.. Looking at it that seems like a huge difference but I remember they definitely said it was more likely with the father.

 

According to the ADA, yes.

"In general, if you are a man with type 1 diabetes, the odds of your child getting diabetes are 1 in 17. If you are a woman with type 1 diabetes and your child was born before you were 25, your child's risk is 1 in 25; if your child was born after you turned 25, your child's risk is 1 in 100.

Your child's risk is doubled if you developed diabetes before age 11. If both you and your partner have type 1 diabetes, the risk is between 1 in 10 and 1 in 4.

There is an exception to these numbers. About 1 in every 7 people with type 1 diabetes has a condition called type 2 polyglandular autoimmune syndrome.

In addition to having diabetes, these people also have thyroid disease and a poorly working adrenal gland. Some also have other immune system disorders. If you have this syndrome, your child's risk of getting the syndrome including type 1 diabetes is 1 in 2."

Here is the link. http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/genetics-of-diabetes.html
Click the link and the information I quoted above is under "Type 1 Diabetes Your Child's Risk"

 

Boy did I mess with these theories above. My dad is Type 1, I am not yet at this time. My youngest child who was born when I was 32 is my type 1 angel...lol

We had my son tested for antibodies at the JDRF walk this summer, he was negative for now. My other daughter tried, but her vein went poof as the needle went in and we did not want her to be upset anymore. We shall try again next year.

 

1 in 2??? Ella doesn't *officially* have PGA, but does have other autoimmune involvement including thyroid disease, borderline Addison's disease (our doctor calls it adrenal fatigue), celiac, severe allergies, asthma and autoimmune anemia. I'll have to talk to our endo about that statistic...I know she's only 10, but it's thinks like this that make me look far into the future and worry.

 

They wrote it in a misleading way. Your daughter meets the criteria for PGA and if she has the gene, her kids have a 50% change (actually slightly higher, because of the possibility of getting it from their dad) of having that gene. However- here's how they mislead you- having the gene would not necessarily mean that they would have any diseases at all and would not be surprising if they got just thyroid disease or something like that. If you even just think about the statistics on there, you can see that. Because they say that 1 in 7 type 1s have the syndrome, and 1 in 2 kids of people with the syndrome have it, that's 1 in 14 kids of people with type 1 diabetes (assuming the syndrome doesn't decrease odds of having kids) having the syndrome, and fewer than 1 in 14 people with a type 1 parent develop type 1, and quite a lot of kids born to people with type 1 are born to type 1 diabetics without other immune issues.
Also, if 1 in 7 kids with type 1 truly had an autosomal dominant gene causing type 1 diabetes, then roughly 1 in 7 of those kids would have a parent who passed it on to them- and as you may have noticed, most of the kids on here and elsewhere with type 1 do not have a parent with multiple autoimmune issues, although a huge portion of the women here have hypothyroidism. Considerably fewer than 1 in 7 of the parents on here have type 1 diabetes or a spouse with type 1 diabetes.