What if I want a family?
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Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they want to have children. If you have the changed HD gene, your children are at 50% risk of also having the gene and developing HD in the future. Some people are prepared to take the risk in the hope that by the time their children become adults a cure will have been found or better medication will be available. Some people choose not to take that risk and decide not to have children, or to have children who are not at risk by using prenatal genetic testing or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
There are options available these days to reduce the risks. Once a person is pregnant, the foetus can be tested to see if it has the changed gene. This is called prenatal (say: pree-nay-tul) genetic testing. This would be done at a genetics centre and you would speak to a genetics specialist beforehand to talk through your concerns and the possible outcomes. There is also a procedure using In-vitro (say: in vee-tro) Fertilisation (IVF) techniques available in some places. This is called Pre-implantation (say: pree-im-plant-ay-shun) Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and uses IVF techniques to fertilise the eggs in a laboratory and test the embyros for the changed gene. Only embryos that are free of the changed gene would then be implanted into the womb, thereby making sure the baby will not develop HD later in life. Like all IVF procedures this can be a lengthy and stressful process, and you have to pay a lot of the costs.
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