According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF), cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-threatening genetic disease affecting approximately 30,000 people in the United States.
It is caused by a defective gene causing the body to produce a faulty protein that leads to abnormally thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and can result in fatal lung infections.
The mucus also obstructs the pancreas, causing difficulty for a person to absorb nutrients in food and can block the bile duct in the liver, eventually causing permanent damage in approximately six percent of people with CF.
More than 10 million Americans are genetic carriers. Carriers each have one copy of the defective CF gene, but do not have the disease and its symptoms. It takes two copies of the gene -- one from each parent -- for a child to be born with cystic fibrosis.
CF occurs in approximately one of every 3,500 live births of all Americans. About 1,000 new cases of CF are diagnosed each year. More than 80 percent of patients are diagnosed by age three; however, nearly 10 percent of newly diagnosed cases are age 18 or older.
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