With March being Trisomy Awareness Month, we'd like to take a moment to provide a brief bit of information about and attention to the different three different types of trisomies. Today, we'll talk about Trisomy 13.
Trisomy 13, also known as Patau Syndrome, is caused by a person's 13th chromosome occurring three times instead of twice. The occurrence can either be present in all of the cells, or part of them. The partial occurrence is called mosaicism.
Trisomy 13 is a rare condition. There seems to be a discrepancy between our sources on how often the condition occurs, with the average being 1 in every 9,500 births. The odd of Trisomy 13 occurring does increase with age, with a dramatic 13% chance increase at the age of 32.
Due to the rarity of Trisomy 13, we cannot provide information about standard treatment options. Treatment occurs on a case by case basis. The support group Support Organization for Trisomy (SOFT) provides an excellent handout, which can be found here. We highly recommend visiting their website, which is linked here.