Can people with thalassemia give birth to healthy children?

Ask:

Recently, my husband and I went for a health check-up and the test results showed that we both carry the recessive gene for thalassemia. We are worried whether we can have a healthy child or not. Can you advise me?

Nguyen Hoa ( Hanoi )

Dr. Pham Minh Duc, Genetics Department, Medlatec Testing Center replied:

Thalassemia (congenital hemolytic anemia) is the most common genetic disease in the world with a gene carrier rate of about 7%. Notably, Vietnam has a higher gene carrier rate than the world.

According to statistics, the rate of people carrying the disease gene in Vietnam is 13%, many ethnic groups have the rate of carrying the Thalassemia gene up to 30-40%, the Kinh ethnic group alone is 9.8%.

People carrying the gene often have no clinical manifestations, no anemia, or mild anemia, leading to not knowing that they carry the disease gene.

In case both husband and wife are healthy carriers of the gene, the rate of having a normal child is 25%, the child is a healthy carrier of the disease gene is 50% and there is a 25% risk of the child having the disease.

To prevent giving birth to children with genetic diseases, there are many recommended methods such as premarital health screening, genetic testing (karyotyping test, latent gene test), prenatal screening tests for pregnant women (Double Test, Triple Test, NIPT...).

These are effective "keys" to help parents promptly screen and predict possible bad risks, preventing giving birth to children with genetic diseases.

For families where both husband and wife carry recessive genes for genetic diseases, medical experts recommend getting pregnant under the advice of a geneticist.

Parents need to understand the risk of giving birth to a sick child and consider choosing assisted reproductive methods, proactively diagnosing pre-implantation embryos instead of natural pregnancy to be able to give birth to healthy babies.