Tristan da Cunha

Are you as helpless as I was? What the heck is Tristan da Cunha and why am I writing about it? Okay, in order to give the information some content, here’s how I came to that: Some of my roomies and I sometimes learn “together” in terms of sitting/ lying together in our kitchen-cum-living room and studying, each of us for their own studies. Although I’m a “loner” with studying languages on my floor you wouldn’t believe how many similarities our different branches of studies have. So we’re all studying Martina and Karin for medicine, Mario for geography and myself for you know what ;-) as Karin breaks our peaceful silence: “Hä? What’s Tristan da Cunha but especially what does it have to do with medicine?” What we found out is that it’s for all of us and our branches!
It has to do with geography and my branch because Tristan da Cunha is a group of remote islands in the South Atlantic Ocean and is a dependency of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena making English its official language. It’s also the most remote archipelago and the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world. Its population is only about 300. Isn’t that cute? It’s like a big family but that again kind of makes it worrying … Nevertheless, this is the point where it’s becoming interesting for the medic. Since it’s such a sparsely populated area (on the whole island people share just eight surnames) health problems due to endogamy play quite a big role. Caused by inevitable marriages among distantly related couples resulting in small gene pools asthma and glaucoma (some kind of disease of the optic nerve; but to be more accurate at Karin's disposition: Glaucoma is a disease caused by increased intraocular pressure (IOP) resulting either from a malformation or malfunction of the eye’s drainage structures; so the damage of the optical nerve is just a consequence of the increased intraocular pressure) are quite common diseases. Having found out about these health problems scientists discovered that the mutated gene CC16 38A is significant for a disposition to asthma. Thus, 50% of the whole population suffers from asthma as a result of familial heredity. Another interesting thing of Tristan da Cunha is that young people generally would like to stay on the island but they are often concerned about finding a spouse. So some move abroad, marry and hope to return.