Hey Angie, I corrected your title so that it's related to the question.
This non-disjunction is often referred to one of two reasons, or may be both: · Weakness of spindle fibers, which makes them unable to separate the two chromosomes of Pair 21 from each other. · Long Prophase 1. The prophase 1 stage is the stage where the chromatin network analysis into distinct chromosomes and each two homologous chromosomes are arranged in one pair, beside each other. So, as the time of prophase 1 increase, as the time the two chromosomes being close to each other increase, as the closeness between them increase and the difficulty of separating them also increases, leading to the non-disjunction. The time of prophase 1 increases as the age of the mother increase, because in females, the prophase 1 of an ovum continues from the moment of puberty, until the time of its turn to be completed and produced into the fallopian tube. Therefore, the older the mother is, the longer the time of prophase 1 of the ova, and the higher the risk of having a baby with Down's syndrome. Maternal age: Researchers have established that the likelihood that a reproductive cell will contain an extra copy of chromosome 21 increases dramatically as a woman ages. Therefore, an older mother is more likely than a younger mother to have a baby with Down syndrome, but older mothers account for only about 9% of all live births each year, and 25% of Down syndrome births. The incidence of Down syndrome rises with increasing maternal age. Many specialists recommend that women who become pregnant at age 35 or older undergo prenatal testing for Down syndrome. The likelihood that a woman under 30 who becomes pregnant will have a baby with Down syndrome is less than 1 in 900 to 1,000, but the chance of having a baby with Down syndrome increases to 1 in 350 for women who become pregnant at age 35. The likelihood of Down syndrome continues to increase as a woman ages, so that by age 42, the chance is 1 in 60 that a pregnant woman will have a baby with Down syndrome, and by age 49, the chance is 1 in 12. But using maternal age alone will not detect over 75% of pregnancies that will result in Down syndrome.
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