BALANCED NONACROCENTRIC WHOLE-ARM RECIPROCAL TRANSLOCATIONS - A DE-NOVO CASE AND LITERATURE-REVIEW

We report a new de novo case of a balanced whole-arm reciprocal transl ocation, detected at prenatal diagnosis for late maternal age, A revie w of previous cases indicates there is a risk of chromosomally abnorma l liveborn offspring when a parent is a carrier of this type of transl ocation, particularly when the translocated region is at small chromos omal segment. Due to the limited number of cases, exact reproductive r isks are not available. This is the second example of such a transloca tion of chromosomes 1 and 5, raising the possibility of nonrandom invo lvement of certain chromosomes in balanced nonacrocentric whole-arm re ciprocal translocations. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.