Genetic Disorders And Color Blindness

Every individual cell in the human body except sperms, egg cells and RBC contain 23 pairs of chromosomes. These chromosomes determine the physical and genetic characteristics of a person. Any variation or error in these chromosomes results in medical conditions known as genetic disorders. One such condition is color blindness

Color blindness, also known as color vision deficiency, is a medical condition that can be defined as the inability of a person to clearly perceive and differentiate between the primary colors in the spectrum. Although color blindness can occur as a result of eye, nerve or brain damage, this disease is basically a genetic disorder that was described for the first time in 1798 by John Dalton, an English chemist.

Genetic disorders such as color blindness are hereditary and can be inherited. As per the available research data, mutations in around 19 chromosomes and many different genes can cause color blindness. There are three different types of genetically inherited color blindness disorders that range from mild difficulty to distinguish shades to a total inability to detect any type of color.

Monochromacy: Also known as “total color blindness”, monochromacy is a rare condition where the individual cannot distinguish any color. This disease can be further classified into rod monochromacy or achromatopsia and cone monochromacy.
Dichromacy: This is a moderately severe form of color blindness where the individual cannot differentiate one or more than one primary color. This can be further divided into protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia.
Anamolous trichromacy: This is the most common type of color vision disorder where the affected individual lacks the normal three-dimensional color vision. There are different forms of trichromacy that include protanomaly, dueteranomaly or red-green hereditary photoreceptor disorder and tritanomaly or blue-yellow color vision defect.

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Genetic Disorders And Color Blindness