Summary
1. Investigations were started in 1959 in Andhra Pradesh, India, to find out the frequency of different types of consanguineous marriages among the inpatients of King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, their parents, their children and the parents of school children of two schools in Visakhapatnam and one school in Waltair.
2. Out of 2,177 marriages investigated, 16·6 per cent were between first cousins, 7·2 per cent with maternal uncles and 6·7 per cent with more distant relatives such as first cousins once removed and second cousins. In all, 30·6 per cent or 666 marriages were consanguineous. The percentage of consanguineous marriages was 39·3 in the inpatients, 25·1 in their parents, 33·8 in their children, and 25·9 in the parents of school children.
3. The mean coefficient of inbreeding for all marriages was ·02093. It was ·02777 among the inpatients, ·01745 in their parents, ·01862 in their children, and ·01939 in the parents of school children.
4. The mean coefficient of inbreeding among the parents of inpatients with pulmonary tuberculosis was ·03289 and was significantly higher than the values calculated for other groups. The value of the coefficient among mothers with abortions was ·03040, and in inpatients having children with congenital malformations ·03153.
5. Out of eightyone inpatients of the Gynaecological ward investigated for sterility, 22·2 per cent of the females married to consanguineous spouses and 16·6 per cent of those married to non-consanguineous spouses were sterile. This result is compared with similar data obtained previously in France, Sweden, the United States and the Susak island of the Adriatic.
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Dronamraju, K.R., Khan, P.M. The frequency and effects of consanguineous marriages in Andhra Pradesh. J Genet 58, 387–401 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02986307
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02986307