A 42-year-old member asked:
Is dwarfism caused by a recessive or dominant allele?
1 doctor answer • 4 doctors weighed in

Dr. Anna-Kaisa Niemianswered
Clinical Genetics 17 years experience
It depends: It depends on what one means by dwarfism: a short stature in general (this depends on your ethnic origin as well) or a genetic syndrome which involves extremely short stature as part of the clinical picture. Some of them are dominant = inherited from a parent or rose spontaneously (de novo) in the individual. Some of them are recessive (=parents unaffected carriers of the condition).
4.2k viewsReviewed >2 years ago
Last updated Apr 5, 2016
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