Welcome to Fragile X Friday.  I have decided to designated Fridays (when I remember!!) as Fragile X Friday.  The point is to increase awareness & support for this community.  I’ve covered some stuff about Fragile X (or FX) before & today I am going to focus on women.

Approximately 1 in 260 women in the world carry the Fragile X premutation.   Females with either a premutation or full mutation have a risk to have a child, male or female, with fragile X syndrome.  Women with the premutation experience a higher incidence of twin births and 22% experience premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) -menopause before at 40 and another 28% experience early menopause.

As well, female carriers can experience learning difficulties with math & vocabulary.  Some also report increased shyness, anxiety and depression.  Studies indicate up to 70% of carriers have experienced at least one major depressive episode in their lifetime.

Want to know more?  Click on my links to the side and for real-world perspectives, visit Fragile What?.  Beth has an awesome blogroll to give you lots of insights.