MYSTERY OF “IMMIGRATION DELAY DISEASE” SOLVED

By S. Yamin abd Dan Wilner

Courtesy of Hamodia

Research teams in Israel and Switzerland have discovered the cause of adermatoglyphia, also known as “Immigration Delay Disease”, according to a report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

It was dubbed “immigration delay disease” because sufferers, who have smooth fingerprints, have a hard time entering foreign countries where fingerprint identification is required.  They also produce less hand sweat than the average person.

Peter Itin, a dermatologist at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, where the phenomenon is being studied, is credited with naming it.

Itin and his colleagues, including Eli Sprecher, a dermatologist at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, identified a defective gene, SMARCAD1, as the cause of the rare condition.

Their discovery was confirmed when it was determined that the gene was detected in the genetic code of fingerprintless members of a family in Switzerland, but not in the other family members with normal fingerprints.  The findings were published last month in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

In 2007, a Swiss woman from that family in her late 20’s was delayed by a customs agent who could not confirm her identity when she attempted to cross the U. S. border.  Although her facial features matched her passport photo. The agents were dumbfounded when they saw she had no fingerprints.

Her family was only one of four ever documented to have adermatoglyphia.

Research into SMARCAD1 is not over.  Sprecher’s next step is to try to ascertain the function of SMARCAD1 and how it contributes to the formation of fingerprint patterns, an as yet unsolved mystery.