But Women Don't Get AS?

Hello, and welcome to The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. Well, this is the month of November and I hope everybody's doing well.

First I want to take a minute to talk about the show itself. I cannot thank everybody enough for making October just an amazing month for the show. The download numbers were through the roof and the feedback I got on the episodes was fantastic. So I really appreciate that and we added in a number of new countries that have access to show

Let's get right into the show for the Question of the Week, I saw several people asking the same question online and it is can Ankylosing Spondylitis be inherited? Is it an inheritable disease you know, from one family member to the next generation to generation, in essence, it can run in families. In one of those markers, they used to look at it as the HLA- B27 gene. Now having this gene doesn't mean that you will get Ankylosing Spondylitis, but it is one of those markers that they look for. I found this kind of interesting in that research has shown that more than nine out of 10 people with AS carry the HLA-B27 gene, that's pretty amazing. It's almost 100% of everybody has it having this gene does not necessarily mean you'll develop as, as I said, it's estimated eight in every 100 people in the general population have the HLA-B27 gene, but most do not have AS so if you have it, you may end up getting AS but it doesn't mean you will. It also shows that's one of things you can look at it and family members and this particular person in the Question of the Week, they were wondering if they should have some family members tested for it because they and the other sibling had it. So I kind of replied back that it's not going to hurt anything. It never hurts to know if that gene is present because it could go along to explaining some future medical conditions if they run into AS it's also something to know that as we said as can run in families that gene can be inherited from familymembers to family member and if you have AS and test show you carry the HLA-B27 gene and their is a one in two chance that you could pass on the gene to any children you have is estimated that between five to 20% of children with this gene will then go out and develop AS that's still quite a wide variants of it. I have three kids they were all tested for the gene and if I remember right to came back with it, one didn't maybe all three had it. I don't remember exactly what it was, but they were tested and I believe my two older ones did have the gene one is showing some effects. I don't know if she'll come to grips with it. And hope you know, personally, I hope nothing ever develops of it. The other one is not nor is the youngest one.

With that said, let's move on to today's topic of discussion. The Question of the Week done, let's look at this week's topic. You know, when I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, I was told a couple of things. Now,granted, you know, this was 35 years ago, so a lots changed. But when I was diagnosed, I was told this is primarily a man's disease, you'll rarely if ever see it in women. And it's primarily disease people of Mediterranean descent.

What we found out is that is obviously not the case. So we know that today all these advances have been done in the research for Ankylosing Spondylitis that in fact, women get it probably just as much as men. I found this really cool article and it talked about different things dealing with a woman's diagnosis with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Again, as we've all heard, and been told women don't get it, but we know that that is incorrect. And I've had to do is look through the boards on Facebook, you'll see that there's just a ton of women dealing with this condition. So as we know, Ankylosing Spondylitis is an inflammatory form of arthritis that we get that starts in our SI joints or spine moves up the spine and then or can...