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General Information On Down Syndrome Essay

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Down syndrome is a genetic disorder most commonly caused by extra copies of chromosome 21. It occurs randomly during cell division in fetal development. This paper will discuss general information on Down syndrome, which will include the discovery of syndrome, the types and causes, the risk factors. Furthermore, this paper will also discuss the sign and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. General background
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder occurs in every individual regardless of gender, ethnicity and race. A British physician John Langdon Down discovered Down syndrome. He perceived Down syndrome a special kind of mental disability. As stated in Global Down syndrome (2015), in 1866, John Langdon Down named the disorder a Mongoloid because the facial features resembled Mongolian. In 1959, a French physician, Dr. Jerome Lejeune observed 47 chromosomes in the cell of an individual with Down syndrome and he concluded the result of Mongoloid is due to chromosomal abnormalities. As a result, in 1965, The World Health Organization accepted the name Down syndrome as the medical term for abnormal chromosome 21.
Every normal person inherits one copy of chromosome 21 from father and one copy of chromosome 21 from mother thus they have two copies of chromosome 21. But individuals with Down syndrome have 3 copies of chromosome 21. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014), one in every 700 babies is born with Down syndrome in the United States. Due to this

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