- Posted on- Jul 09, 2015
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Turner syndrome is a health complication that affects only girls and women when the X chromosome (a sex chromosome) is partially or completely missing. The syndrome can lead to developmental problems like short height, failure to start puberty, infertility, heart problems, learning issues and social behaviour problems.
Turner syndrome is usually diagnosed in prenatal stages, during infancy or in early childhood. In some cases, the diagnosis is delayed till teen age because of mild signs and symptoms of the syndrome.
Causes of Turner syndrome
Most people are born with two sex chromosomes. A boy gets the X chromosome from his mother and the Y chromosome from his father. Similarly, a girl gets one X chromosome from each parent. If a girl has Turner syndrome
, one X chromosome will be partially or fully absent. Symptoms of Turner syndrome includes:
- The reason behind the absence of an X chromosome may be because of an error in the father's sperm or in the mother's egg. This results in every cell having only one X chromosome.
- In certain cases, an error occurs in cell division during initial stages of foetal development. This results in some cells having two copies of the X chromosome. Other cells contain only one copy of the X chromosome.