Amazing Albino Africans

Today I would like to show you amazing photographs of Africans with albinism. Some of them you will find weird looking and some astonishingly beautiful. Albinism is one of the so-called rare diseases, of which we know thousands, although each one affects few or very few people. In Europe and North America it is estimated that about 1 in 17000 people is born with one of the 20 known types of albinism. In Europe the most common type of albinism is OCA1 (oculocutaneous albinism type 1), caused by mutations in the TYR gene. On the contrary, in Africa the most frequent albinism is OCA2 (oculocutaneous albinism type 2), produced by mutations in a gene with the same name. Mutations appear, randomly, constantly and may affect all our genes. Sometimes, a mutation appears for the first time in a person in a community, more or less separate from the rest, and then, it is transmitted from parents to children and spreads rapidly among the members of the same group. In Africa, this mutation is responsible for the fact that many people with albinism are not only OCA2 but also carry the same mutation.