Local Hospital Group Studying Risk of Tay-Sachs Among The Irish

Tay-Sachs Disease is widely known as a genetic disorder among Jews. But a new study is exploring the risk in another group: the Irish.

Genetic testing is routine for potential parents of Jewish descent to identify the children’s risk for Tay-Sachs Disease, a rare but fatal disorder that often kills children before their fifth birthday.

But after three recent cases of Tay-Sachs turned up in the Irish population in the Philadelphia area, it got Einstein Medical Center‘s director of clinical genetics, Dr. Adele Schneider, wondering.

(Read the whole piece by Mike DeNardo, which aired on KYW Radio here.)