On consanguineous marriages and the genetic load

摘要

It has been reported that studies of the genetic consequences of inbreeding should adopt a different strategy in populations having a relatively old inbreeding history and where inbreeding levels have varied orver time. This contention is tested with a series of 39,495 single-birth records from Bombay, India, collected in a World Health Organization survey on congenital malformations. Our analysis reveals that:1.the incidence of major malformations is significantly higher among the inbred offspring (1.34) as compared to that among non-inbred ones (0.81)—a finding at variance with a previous study in the same area;2.the inbreeding effect on perinatal mortality (stillbirths and mortality during the first few days of life) is also found to be significan