Chinese doctors claimed to have identified a woman with the rare condition of three transposed chromosomes after she gave birth to a malformed baby.
Doctors with the Maternity and Child Care Hospital in Huzhou city in the northern part of Zhejiang Province, east China, said on Friday that they gave the woman and baby a chromosome check after the birth.
Doctors with the hereditary disease section of the hospital discovered "complicated transposal" of the No. 10, No. 13 and No. 21 chromosomes of the woman.
Though all of her physiological indicators were found to be up to normal standards as none of her genes were lost or repeated in her chromosomes, doctors noted that women like her inclined to give birth to malformed babies.
A total of 1,210 abnormal types of chromosomes have been recorded in China, most of which involve only two chromosomes per person, said the doctors. Every person normally has 46 chromosomes.
Medical experts hold that the discovery is of great scientific value for them to look for the gene accountable for diseases and to probe into the function of genes and the cause of malformation.
(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2003)
