How do people get PCD?
PCD is a genetic disorder. It is inherited from one’s parents and cannot be acquired from the environment. PCD is most often passed in what is called an ‘autosomal recessive’ pattern of inheritance, in which the disease is only expressed when a child inherits two copies of a mutated gene—one from each parent. The parents are considered ‘carriers’ because they ‘carry’ the mutation, but are not sick themselves because they only have one copy of the mutated gene. When two carriers produce children, however, they have a 1 in 4 chance of having a child who will inherit both of their mutations, which will result in the disease being expressed. One common misconception with PCD is that since it is inherited, it should have been recognized in other family members. Recessive diseases simply don’t appear in that way. Carrier status can be unknowingly passed in a family for decades, possibly even centuries, before a carrier meets another carrier by random chance and they produce an affected child
