It's Friday!!
It's Fact Friday!!
A new born child with scrotum and and a Penis, is a male! The one with a vulva and Labia is a female. What name will you call someone who has a mixture of the two? Hermaphrodite right? Good! What name will you call one who has a penis like protruding and no scrotum but an urethra opening that looks like a Labia? A child with a genital condition where the Clitoris protrudes like a penis and the urethra is a small opening attached to the emerging clit, and a vagina beneath it?
Seems confusing right?
Well that's the purpose of Fun Fact Friday, we do a thorough research on some happenings in the society, and make them known to you on Fridays, an extra knowledge we guarantee.
The above condition is called an AMBIGUOUS GENITALIA!
Ambiguous because it is unclear, unspecified. A medical condition where a new born child has unclear and unspecified genital, making it hard to really describe the gender of the child. Sadly, experts shows that this genital condition happens to one in every four thousand five hundred children born. The girl baby has a vulva and testicles, for boys, the urethra opening nornally located at the gland penis is located at an unusual place, it's located under neath the Penis.
WHAT COULD BE THE CAUSE?
Factors includes, Hormonal imbalance, Malformation of the fetal tissues that are supposed to evolve into genitals and genetic variation! Mild forms of ambiguous genitalia may be characterised by a large (penis-like) clitoris in baby girls or undescended testicles in boys. (Better Health Channel).
WE SHOULD TELL YOU HOW A BABY'S GENITAL IS FORMED!
A baby's sex is decided at conception. The mother's egg provides an X chromosome and the father's sperm determines the baby's sex by contributing either an X or Y sex chromosome. An XX embryo is female while an XY embryo is male. Both female and male embryos develop in exactly the same way and have identical gonads and genital parts until around the eighth week of gestation. The sexual determination process includes:
Girls - the internal genital parts transform into the uterus, fallopian tubes and vagina. The gonads turn into ovaries which start producing female sex hormones. The lack of male hormones is fundamental in allowing the development of female genitalia.
Boys - the internal genital parts transform into the prostate gland and vas deferens. The gonads turn into testes which start producing male sex hormones. The presence of male hormones allows the penis and scrotum to develop.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
for kids with ambiguous genitalia, the system is interrupted, and the outcome is in turn interrupted. For typical genital development, the gender 'message' must be communicated from the sex chromosomes to the gonads. The gonads must then manufacture appropriate hormones and the genital tissues and structures have to respond to these hormones. Any deviations along the way can cause ambiguous genitalia. For the development of the female genitals to be successful, the male chromosome must be deactivated. However this doesn't always happen, which then leads to ambiguous genitalia, this is caused by:
Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) - a genetic condition characterised by the fetal tissue's insensitivity to male hormones. This affects genital development. For example, a newborn may have some of the female reproductive organs but also have testicles.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) - an inherited condition that affects hormone production. A child with CAH lacks particular enzymes, and this deficiency triggers the excessive manufacture of male hormones. For example, female genitals are masculinised.
Sex chromosome disorders - instead of having either XX or XY sex chromosomes, a baby may have a mixture of both ('mosaic' chromosomes); or specific genes on the Y chromosome may be inactive; or one of the X chromosomes may have a tiny Y segment attached to it. Research at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) indicates that ambiguous genitalia can be caused by the doubling up of a particular gene (named WNT-4) on the sex chromosome. This variation will interfere with male sexual development so that a genetically male baby will appear female.
Maternal factors - the pregnant mother may have had an androgen-secreting tumour while pregnant, and the excess of this male hormone affected her baby's genital development. In other cases, the placenta may have lacked a particular enzyme which failed to deactivate male hormones from the baby as a result, both the mother and the female baby were masculinised by the excess of these hormones.
WHAT'S THE WAY FORWARD?
Surgery can be done with patients with Ambiguous Genitalia, but this is to trim down the excessive protruding clitoris et al. It doesn't guarantee the effectiveness of the sexual genitals in the future. This means that, even though surgery could be used to correct the ambiguity of the genitals, the reconstructed genitals will not be as functional as it should be. The child will possibly be infertile also, and the baby may feel they belong to the opposite gender different from the one assigned to them.
Early surgery is prescribe for babies with genital ambiguity, though many expert suggest the baby be grown to decide what gender they really are. It's suggested that the child be talked to about their condition in a careful way.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT.
Children with this problem will possibly suffer depression, they fell odd, a kind of being left out and a misfit. Parents and Guardians are to be actively involved in their lives, depression unchecked could lead to suicidal thoughts and possible suicide.
The society on the other way, especially the Nigerian society, suffering from illiteracy amongst large number of citizens taunts, stigmatize and in most cases lynch children with this condition. A typical example is the one of 2017, in Delta state Nigeria, where a little boy with the genital problem sexually abused by a man, is forcely stripped, and beaten and mocked. The video has a background voice where the child is being called a witch. The Nigerian society, in her quest to not know any new thing and judgmental attitude does not help matter in making the world a safe haven for those perceived as societal misfit.
So the next time you see a child with a vulva and testicles in one genital, a penis and a seeming vagina beneath it, don't flare up, don't lynch, don't set ablaze. Just know their condition is known as Ambiguous Genitalia, and they need your support to keep being strong!!
References
- UCLA geneticists identify cause of malformed genitalia, finding will improve sex assignments in ambiguous (2001), EurekAlert, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Washington, DC, USA.
- Reproductive system (2001), Better Health Channel, Department of Health, State Government of Victoria, Australia
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