Is cerebellar atrophy hereditary?

Cerebellar atrophy is a very scary disease, and it is hereditary to a certain extent. It is likely to be passed on to the next generation, but it can still be cured if we can treat it in time.

1. In fact, cerebellar atrophy is mostly hereditary. After long-term research, many domestic experts and scholars have found that it is related to many factors such as viral infection, immune deficiency, biochemical enzyme deficiency and abnormal DNA repair function, but its exact cause is still not very clear. Therefore, cerebellar atrophy can be inherited, but since we do not yet understand more of the cause, we cannot know whether it will be passed on specifically to boys or girls.

2. Cerebellar atrophy may be caused by abnormally large repetitions of the nucleotide CAG on chromosomes. Since CAG repeat sequences are mostly present in expression sequences, long chains of glutamate are present in the protein expressed by its gene. This abnormal protein will lead to cell death. Depending on the chromosome where the CAG repeats are located, different types of spinocerebellar atrophy can be subdivided. Therefore, it can be seen that cerebellar atrophy is hereditary.

3. In terms of pathology, the manifestations are varied, the most common of which are atrophy and degeneration of nerve cells, loss of myelin, and mild proliferation of glial cells, resulting in extensive degeneration of the cerebellar hemispheres, vermis, and middle and inferior cerebellar peduncles, and disappearance of Purkinje cells; atrophy or disappearance of nerve cells in the posterior columns and Clarke columns of the spinal cord, followed by glial cell proliferation, degeneration of the posterior roots and spinal ganglia, and loss of myelin, which is particularly evident in the lumbar and sacral spinal cord.

Although cerebellar atrophy is hereditary, it is still possible to prevent the disease if it is properly controlled in the early stages. Readers may wish to pay more attention to relevant preventive measures.