Male to male transmission of supernumerary nipples

✍ Scribed by Orioli, Iêda Maria; Gonĉalves Ribeiro, Márcia; Castilla, Eduardo E.

• Book ID: 101210321
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 KB
• Volume: 73
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0148-7299
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-8628(19971128)73:1<100::aid-ajmg24>3.0.co;2-o

✦ Synopsis

We read the interesting paper by Tsukahara et al. [1997] presenting for the first time in the literature a male to male transmission of supernumerary nipples. Since this report suggests that male to male transmission of supernumerary nipples is an unusual event, we searched the data base of the Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations (ECLAMC) [Castilla and Orioli, 1983].

The ECLAMC registered 736 cases of supernumerary nipples with a standardized description of laterality, size, localization with respect to the true nipples, and family recurrence. Thirty-two cases, 15 males and 17 females, had a mother affected with the same trait, while 23 cases, 18 males and 5 females, had an affected father, and both parents were affected in one case. Thus, even when no deficit of affected fathers transmitting the trait to their sons was registered, the relative frequency of affected fathers transmitting the trait to their daughters was slightly reduced ( 2 ‫ס‬ 4.26; P < 0.05).

Considering that: 1) family data were obtained from the mother; 2) the supernumerary nipple was more frequent in males (sex ratio in 736 cases ‫ס‬ 0.61); and 3) underascertainment of the less severe cases in our register cannot be discarded, then the deficit of affected girls, i.e., the daughters of affected fathers, could be a spurious observation.

Furthermore, since among the 55 pedigrees with at least one affected parent there was a deficit of bilateral cases when the father was affected, a careful analysis of all 736 supernumerary nipple pedigrees will be needed in order to clarify the segregation pattern of this trait. Nevertheless, male to male transmission of supernumerary nipples seems to be a frequent finding.