Some People are Born Without Fingerprints

Story:

Some people are born without fingerprints.

Analysis:

A picture shared online claims to show that some people are born without fingerprints. Yes, it is a fact! It happens because of a rare medical condition called Adermatoglyphia.

This story goes back to 2007, when dermatologist Peter Itin was contacted by a Swiss woman facing trouble entering the U.S. — because she had no fingerprints, that she wasn’t born with any. To make it more interesting, Peter found that eight other members from the woman’s extended family too were born printless. He worked with Israeli dermatologist Eli Sprecher and other colleagues to find three other unrelated families with adermatoglyphia and they dubbed it as the “immigration delay disease”. In 2011, they successfully located the single gene mutation responsible for the rare medical condition. Shown in the video is a brief news report on this rare phenomenon, which also includes the Israeli dermatologist Eli Sprecher.

Adermatoglyphia is a very rare condition, where the finger pads of people are entirely flat. Apart from slightly reduced number of sweat glands, the disease causes no problems (of course there can be occasional difficulties with the authorities). What’s more, there are also other genetic disorders like NFJS (Naegeli–Franceschetti–Jadassohn syndrome) and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis which lead to missing fingerprints, but they do cause more severe health impacts like thin, brittle hair and teeth.