Australians have calculated the percentage of incest in the UK ⇐ Incest

[Anonymous]

Hi all. I came across an article about incest. Old, 2019. Many people here are interested in what science says about incest.
I decided to copy it here. Let it be.
The article itself.
Australian scientists analyzed the genomes of 456 thousand British people and found among them more than a hundred people born as a result of consanguineous marriage. These people are characterized by reduced physical and mental abilities and poor health. Researchers estimate the frequency of such inbreeding in the UK to be approximately 1:3652, but these figures may be underestimated. The work was published in the journal Nature Communications. Close crossings (inbreeding) end unfavorably for the population: the offspring from such crossings are smaller in size, live shorter lives and reproduce worse, and this applies not only to animals. In humans, similar patterns are also known: children from consanguineous marriages often die in infancy, and the lives of those who survived are often associated with various diseases and developmental delays. Ashkenazi Jews are a classic example: their modern population originated from only about 350 ancestors. Therefore, for example, they are 10 times more likely to have oncogenic mutations. However, assessing the level of inbreeding among humans is difficult because many cases of incest remain a mystery. But now researchers have a powerful new method: genetic data banks. Loic Yengo and colleagues from the University of Queensland used the UK Biobank database to calculate the number of consanguineous marriages in the UK. They studied the genomes of 456,414 British people, and in each of them they looked for the percentage of homozygosity, that is, the proportion of genetic material that is the same on the chromosomes received from the father and mother. First-degree relatives (such as a brother and sister) share about 50 percent of their genes. For second degree relatives (grandfather and grandson) - approximately 25 percent. The researchers looked among thousands of Britons for those whose parents were first- or second-degree relatives, and therefore selected those with a homozygosity rate above 10 percent. There were 125 such people, the overall incidence of incest in Great Britain was about 0.03 percent, or 1 in 3,652 people. The authors of the work compared their assessment with official data. They counted all cases of incest (which is illegal in the UK) that could result in children in crime records from 2002 to 2017, and divided this number by the total population size. The resulting spread was from 1:5247 in 2012 to 1:4699 in 2017. The researchers note that the order of magnitude they obtained by the two methods is the same. However, both methods have many limitations. Not all cases of incest are reported in the criminal record, and the UK Biobank project involves mostly healthy and prosperous people, so the degree of inbreeding calculated on the basis of these data may be lower than the national average. The researchers then tested whether inbreeding was associated with health outcomes in children. They found - albeit in a small sample of 125 people, but with a good degree of confidence - that offspring from consanguineous marriages tended to have short stature, weak muscles, small lung capacity, and reduced mental ability and fertility (as measured by the number of children). Scientists assessed the general state of health by the number of diseases diagnosed in a person - and it also turned out to be significantly higher in “children of inbreeding.” Finally, the scientists tested whether the level of inbreeding was related to social factors. They found no association with parental education level. As for their place of residence, no “foci of inbreeding” could be identified either, although in general the percentage of consanguineous marriages turned out to be higher in socially disadvantaged areas. Thus, Australian researchers not only confirmed that consanguineous marriages can adversely affect the health of offspring, but also demonstrated that biodata banks can be used as a tool for detecting and studying these marriages. Source https://nplus1.ru/news/ 2019/09/03/biobankinbreeding
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