Albinism in humans Albinism in humans Albinism is a congenital disorder characterized in humans by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism is associated with a number of vision defects, such as photophobia, nystagmus, and amblyopia. Lack of skin pigmentation makes for more susceptibility to sunburn and skin cancers. In rare cases such as Chédiak–Higashi syndrome, albinism may be associated with deficiencies in the transportation of melanin granules. This also affects essential granules present in immune cells leading to increased susceptibility to infection. Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect
Coeliac disease in part due to changes in diagnostic practice. There also appears to be an approximately 4.5 fold true increase that may be due to less exposure to bacteria and other pathogens in Western environments. Humans first started to cultivate grains in the Neolithic period (beginning about 9500 BCE) in the Fertile Crescent in Western Asia, and it is likely that coeliac disease did not occur before this time. Aretaeus of Cappadocia, living in the second century in the same area, recorded a malabsorptive syndrome with chronic diarrhoea, causing a debilitation of the whole body. His "Cœliac Affection" ("coeliac" from Greek