Rett Syndrome

Rett syndrome, a neurological disorder, is often misdiagnosed as autism, cerebral palsy, or idiopathic mental retardation. It affects almost exclusively girls; boys can suffer from the disease but hardly survive after birth, as the central cause of the disease lies in a mutation in a gene on the X chromosome, of which boys have only one, while girls have two. It is a rare disease, currently occurring in one case in ten thousand. It consists of five variants, one classical, and the rest atypical forms; but all have in common the compromise of the patient's manual dexterity, verbal communication and motor skills.