Genetic History/Genogram

A Genogram can be referred to as; a genetic representation which has annotated references normally a family history. This Genogram may contain medical histories, with the medical conditions, other subjective information, and other specific cases. This form a method termed as effective and an analytical tool.

Although similar, with its pictorial nature to a traditional family tree, it is different in that it shows the psychological and hereditary patterns prevalent in a family history. They are used to understand and locate the patient’s personal patterns and traits that are influenced in their lives. Its similarity to a family tree is that it contains the names, gender and birth dates. Information like the social behaviors, relationships, and illnesses are not represented.

In the shown diagram below, there is a representation of a Genogram that shows the inheritance of diabetes in a family. The Genogram uses several symbols to represent the presence and absence of diabetes in the chart.

                     From the symbols above, the information aside each diagram shows the representation of the diagram. The Full Square and circle shows a full and normal male and female respectively while those with additional marks represent a certain defect.  This information is represented at the end of the Genogram.

From the Genogram, the pattern of the diabetes heredity is hard to be interpreted in a chronological manner. The illness is transmitted from the first generation to the next although which consists of three children. In this generation, it is noted that, one of the children is not infected but carries it within. This uninfected male later passes it to her daughter meaning all the second generation had acquired it from their parents. The pattern followed is, however, not specific and regular. This shows that it is not possible to trace perfectly, the future of one in the same lineage.

However, it can be observed that the transmission is more prone according to the gender. If the first generation was a male, the possibility of a male being infected would be higher than that of a female. The female in this case will most probably be the carrier and transmit it to her coming generation. The same case will apply for a female first generation. She will most likely transmit it to her female child and\; thus the male will be the carrier. This should not be, however, viewed as the perfect truth as it will not apply in all cases.

In our case above, the infected party is the female. The resultant generation comprises of three children a female and two males. From them, the female and the male are infected while the other male becomes a mare carrier. This sows the resistance of the male to the female according to the first generation carrier.

While the second generation moves on, she gets two males \, and none is infected. Among them, one becomes a carrier and the other one does not to suffer at all. The infected male, on the other hand, gets two females and a male, and out of the three children the male is infected, and only one female becomes a carrier. This shows that the gender of the child is a high determiner of whether he or she will acquire the disease or not.

The other second generation gets two children, a male and a female. In this case, the female gets the infection although the carrier is the male. This further shows how irregular the transmission of the disease is.

Conclusively, one may say that the Genogram is a way that one may try and predict the medical condition of a patient in the future. Although irregular, the possibility seems to lie and be biased on one side of the infected gender.