New Ankylosing Spondylitis content for you
Genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains how it's possible for healthy people to pass on genetic disorders.
Genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains how nature and nurture work together and not in isolation.
Genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains how we can all be unique when we share 99.9% of our DNA.
How can our genes reveal personalised treatment options? Genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains.
As part of a new blog series, genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains the role of genetics in immune conditions.
Certified genetic counsellor Kira Dineen explains genetic risk and the role it plays in healthcare decisions.
Patient advocate Steff Di Pardo shares her experience of living with AS.
AS Prevalence
AS is estimated to affect about one in every 560 people globally.
Estimates on the amount of people with AS vary quite widely by geographical area, with the lowest prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the highest in Northern Arctic communities. [1]
Genetics
Genetically, AS is complex, although it does have a particularly strong association with one gene - HLA-B27. [2]
Heritability means how much of the differences in a trait (like height) within a group of people can be attributed to differences in genetics.
Something like eye colour has very high heritability (>80%), which means it’s almost completely determined by genetics. Something like a person’s first language has 0% heritability - as that’s entirely to do with their environment.
What it doesn’t mean is how likely something is to be inherited from a parent , as even if a condition had 100% heritability, and so was completely down to genetics, it might be associated with a dominant or recessive gene, or more likely associated with many many genes, which interact in complex ways and which are still being explored & discovered!
Main Symptoms
Signs of AS usually start to appear between 20 to 30 years of age [4]
These are the best resources we've found so far on managing and learning about AS . Please let us know if you have other and we'll add them to the list!
Share this page to help us reach more people, build a better information set, and move research forward!