Darren's mother is from Cebu in the Philippines, and has Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish ancestry. Darren's father is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has English, and some German and Northern Irish, ancestry.
Description. While dwarfism is sometimes used to describe achondroplasia, a condition characterized by short stature and disproportionately short arms and legs, it is also used more broadly to refer to a variety of conditions resulting in unusually short stature in both children and adults.
About 80 percent of people with achondroplasia have average-size parents; these cases result from new mutations in the FGFR3 gene. In the remaining cases, people with achondroplasia have inherited an altered FGFR3 gene from one or two affected parents.Individuals who inherit two altered copies of this gene typically have a severe form of achondroplasia that causes extreme shortening of the bones and an underdeveloped rib cage.wo specific mutations in the FGFR3 gene are responsible for almost all cases of achondroplasia. Researchers believe that these mutations cause the FGFR3 protein to be overly active, which interferes with skeletal development and leads to the disturbances in bone growth seen with this disorder.