Chances our child would inherit husband's deformed toes?

December 30, 2007 12:45 PM

My husband has deformed toes. What are the chances that this will be passed on to our child if we have one? My husband's toes vary wildly in length--in particular, his 4th toe is longer than all the rest, and all of his toenails are kind of squashed and distorted. Apparently the rest of his family all have normal toes. What could have caused this, and what are the chances (yes, I'm looking for numbers here, if possible) that this deformity would be passed on to our child?
posted by Enroute to health & fitness (19 comments total)

An obvious question would be, have his feet always looked that way, or where they normal/normalish when he was younger? If he has out of the norm feet size/shape, it's likely that he's never been properly measured for shoes and keeps buying the ill fitting size. There's a guy named Phil Oren who developed this crazy complex shoe fitting program because his feet got so ruined by bad shoes. You can look him up and visit a store that has someone trained to do the fitting. He focused mostly on hiking boots when I was trained, but if you ask questions and pay attention while the guy fits you, you can take the lessons to other types of shoes.
posted by Phoenix42 at 12:53 PM on December 30, 2007

Yeah and obviously my answer means nothing if he was born that way.
posted by Phoenix42 at 12:56 PM on December 30, 2007

Do you have any pictures? Your description of the toenails, at least, sounds like something caused by long-term mistreatment rather than a genetic anomaly. As for toe length, "deformity" may be a bit of a stretch, here. There's a lot of normal variance in toe length.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:24 PM on December 30, 2007

Does he have an actual diagnosis for his feet, or are they just deformed? If he has a medical name for his condition he can put it into omim, this is a database of pretty much all heritable traits known in humans.

Alternatively you could try looking up a genetic counsellor, their job is to talk to people about heritable diseases and the risks involved when having children.
posted by scodger at 1:29 PM on December 30, 2007 [3 favorites]

If it is a deformity passed on by a dominant allele, then all your children will have it. If it is passed on by a recessive allele, then none of them will have it unless you also carry the allele. If it was caused by a combination of genes, then simple mendellian genetics isn't going to give you an answer. If it was caused by some sort of problem that occurred in the womb while your husband's toes were being developed (such as his mother being exposed to some sort of chemical), then it won't be passed on at all.

For real numbers, you need to see a genetic counselor. Unless you have a name for your husband's disorder, there's not much the internet can tell you.
posted by happyturtle at 1:34 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

When you say "fourth toe" do you mean starting from the big toe or starting from the pinkie toe? I know a fair number of people whose "big" toes are not their longest; the toe next to the "big" toe is longest instead. Apparently it's called Morton's toes. People don't seem to consider it a deformity. I'm not sure if this is anything like your husband's situation, though.
posted by needs more cowbell at 1:51 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes, he was born this way (I've seen his birth certificate, which has little baby footprints on it, and the toe issue is quite obvious). I don't know if "deformity" is the technical word for it, but it's significant enough that extremely rude people sometimes feel moved to comment on it. No diagnosis. It doesn't impair his ability to do anything and it's not something I'd feel moved to see a genetic counselor about. I was kind of wondering if there's an obvious answer like "toes develop in the xth week and if the mother doesn't get enough y, then they might not develop normally." Or "yes, without further information you should assume there is a 50% probability that your child will have this." Or whatever. Although I didn't see what Zachsmind said (thankfully), of course I didn't mean I don't want his baby, geez!
posted by Enroute at 1:54 PM on December 30, 2007

are his deformed toes causing him pain or problems? if not, then don't sweat it. if it is causing him physical problems then you should get genetic counseling before trying to get pregnant.
posted by violetk at 1:55 PM on December 30, 2007

Serious Option: Go see a doctor or counselor as scodger noted. They can tell you stuff that random AskMe browsers can't tell you.

Pseudo-scientific Option: Informal guesswork, see below.

You want, firstly, to know whether your husband's unique toes are a result of his genes. The very, very informal test for this is to ask: are his left and right feet approximate mirror images of each other? If yes, that's a hint that this is a heritable genetic condition, though a negative answer does not completely rule out the possibility.

That informs the main question of whether the kid will have dad's feet. The informal test for this is to ask: if this is genetic, does anyone else in the family have this trait? Because the answer is "no," this would loosely suggest (ignoring a lot of variables) that the trait, if genetic, is not dominant. In that case, the kid will probably not have toes like dad.
posted by zennie at 1:56 PM on December 30, 2007

Needs more cowbell, I mean starting from the big toe. So it's the one next to his pinkie.
posted by Enroute at 1:57 PM on December 30, 2007

If it is a deformity passed on by a dominant allele, then all your children will have it.

Unless I am working under the wrong definition of "allele," if it's a dominant trait, then your children would have a 100 percent chance of inheriting the trait it if your husband carried two dominant genes as opposed to one dominant/one recessive. If he carried two of the dominant, then both of his parents would also have the trait.
posted by Airhen at 1:59 PM on December 30, 2007

My father has eleven toes, but my brothers and I all have the standard ten.

Kind of disappointing, actually.
posted by laughinglikemad at 3:08 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

I am not a geneticist, and I would definitely recommend seeing one to get your question properly answered. Normally I'd jump into the argument about the definition of alleles (which is based on too many assumptions), but I will absolutely refrain--diseases do not normally revolve around one allele, and are usually an extremely complex combination of factors. Only a professional genetic counselor could tell you for sure the likelihood of two parents having a child with a genetic disease.
posted by BenzeneChile at 4:02 PM on December 30, 2007

Happyturtle, if this trait was coded for by a dominant allele at least one of his parents would have to have it which they don't. It is possible that it is a recessive trait. In that case, both parents would have to be heterozygous for the trait in order to pass it on to their offspring.

If it is indeed a recessive trait, the probability of having children with the same trait is dependent on the genotype of the OP.

If Enroute is heterozygous the probability that their children will have the trait is 1/2. If Enroute is homozygous dominant there is no chance that any of their children would have the trait.

I'm sorry to say that my mini-genetics lesson does little if anything to answer Enroute's question. For what it is worth, my cousin has the same condition and all of her kids have normal toes.
posted by a22lamia at 4:10 PM on December 30, 2007

I'll just say that the Mendelian genetics you learned in school or college are frequently inadequate to describe human genetic diseases or other traits. If you want an accurate answer, you will have to see a genetic counselor.
posted by grouse at 4:56 PM on December 30, 2007

My mum has some weird toes (funny lengths, one or two toes "spastic" - bent over double). I have funny length toes, and a single spastic toe(second toe, left foot). Apparently I also have Moreton's toes on both feet (If I straighten the spastic one). My brother doesn't have any of this. Neither of my two kids do. I have no idea what this means genetically, but it's some data for you. My weird toes bother me little - I have to watch for a split toenail on the spastic toe so, but that's just good foot maintenance really. Other than that, the other downside would have been that I would have been undoubtably turned down by a foot fetishist, if that was what pushed my buttons, but you know fortunately I get my kicks elsewhere.
posted by singingfish at 5:51 PM on December 30, 2007

Yeah, ignore what I said about dominant alleles. I was wrong. Anyway, it's unlikely to be controlled by a single gene. If it were, then it would probably be mentioned in everyone's high school biology courses along with tongue rolling and cystic fibrosis.
posted by happyturtle at 5:12 AM on December 31, 2007

I was kind of wondering if there's an obvious answer like "toes develop in the xth week and if the mother doesn't get enough y, then they might not develop normally." Or "yes, without further information you should assume there is a 50% probability that your child will have this." Or whatever.

I kind of bit my lip at what happyturtle said about dominance and alleles, because it is not really wrong, but simply seems unlikely to be true, in this case. The problem here is that a real answer is likely to be unknown at this time, and if unknown, likely to remain unknown until our pigglies become a high priority or we discover the answer by coincidence.

You have chosen to look for simple answers in what, in my opinion, is one of the most complex and delicate areas of human physiology. I love physiology with an obscene geekish zeal, but developmental molecular geneticists tend to make my brain crack open. So, OK, toe development takes place between weeks 5 and 8 of pregnancy (IIRC) and is regulated by a series of programmed cellular changes and growth factors. There are some known ways to disrupt the process, studied in other species. Maybe I could list some chemicals and related genes, and link to more papers, and pretend to have an idea of what may happen with hubby's kids during and after pregnancy. However, that feels like playing with fire, and I feel the better answer is the imprecise one I posted above. 'The best is the enemy of the good,' snarked Voltaire.
posted by zennie at 9:21 AM on December 31, 2007

My mother has something weird with the pinky toes; they stick straight up from the toe and need to be clipped almost to the nail bed. Mine are similar, and the children are less so.
I apparently have Morton's toe on both feet, and the left one is really longer while the right one is actually equal. (I never noticed that before, and thanks to needs more cowbell. The children seem to have that also. I also have slightly webbed toes, between the big and second toe, as do the children.)
IANAGeneticist just the owner of weird toes. Not once in my entire life (60 some years) has anyone ever said, "I refuse to breed with you; you have weird toes."
(I once knew a guy who was sitting on the sand in CA, and he looked at the guy next to him and commented, "I see you have weird toes, just like mine". They had similar webbed toes, and they turned out to be something like third cousins, from a state he had never been to.)
I apparently have weird toes, but I can't say anyone has ever cared in my entire life, including me.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 3:15 PM on December 31, 2007