Prevalence of Consanguinity in Muslim Community-A Review

Consanguinity (blood relation, from the Latin consanguinitas) is the property of being from the same kinship as another person. In that aspect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person. Consanguineous marriage is frequent in many populations. In fact, it has been recently estimated that consanguineous couples and their progeny suppose about 10.4 % of the 6.7 billion global population of the world. First-cousin marriage and other types of consanguineous unions are frequent in a number of current populations from different parts of the world. Consanguinity is most common among muslim population. Consanguinity rates, coupled by the large family size in some communities, could induce the expression of autosomal recessive diseases, including very rare or new syndromes. The most thoroughly investigated are sickle cell disease, haemoglobinopathies, and enzymopathies (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency). It is the duty of the public health professionals to ensure accessibility to counseling services and to periodically evaluate the knowledge and awareness of the health consequences of consanguineous marriages on offspring health so as to reduce this kind of marriages. And creating awareness among the people may lessen the chance of consanguinity