Albert Einstein and his second wife Elsa were first cousins, though the couple never had children.WIKIMEDIA, BALCERHistory is rife with famous married cousins: Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.G. Wells all married their cousins. One estimate suggests that nearly 80 percent of all marriages in history have been between first or second cousins. Now, the largest study of its kind to date links consanguineous marriage—marriage between blood relatives—with a 2-fold increase in the risk of birth defects, such as heart and lung problems and Down syndrome. A similar increased risk was found for mothers over the age of 34. The results were published online Wednesday (July 3) in The Lancet.
Researchers heading the Born in Bradford study—which is tracking the health of 13,500 children born at the Bradford Royal Infirmary between 2007 and 2011—assessed a variety of maternal lifestyle and clinical factors for their influence on congenital anomalies, and found that closely related parents and mother’s age were the greatest risk factors.
“It is important to note that the absolute increase in risk is small—from [2] percent to 6 percent—meaning that only a small minority of babies born to couples who are blood relatives or older mothers . . . will develop a congenital anomaly,” cautioned study lead Eamonn Sheridan, a clinical geneticist at the University of Leeds in the U.K., in a statement.
The researchers found that consanguineous marriage within Bradford’s large Pakistani community ...
