[1][2] Genetic ancestry components related to the Arabian Peninsula display an increasing frequency pattern from west to east over North Africa.
A similar frequency pattern exist across northeastern Africa with decreasing genetic affinities to groups of the Arabian Peninsula along the Nile river valley across Sudan and the more they go south.
[3] This genetic cline of admixture is dated to the time of Arab migrations to the Maghreb and northeast Africa.
The mutation STR DYS388 equal or above 16 found in J1-p58 was used as genetic profiling in forensics since the 1980s to determine Middle Eastern ancestry.
[38] The "Arab macropopulation" is generally closely related to other "West-Eurasian" populations, such as Europeans or Iranian peoples.
[43] Several organizations maintain genetic databases for each Arabic country, such as Saudi Human Genome Program (SHGP).
At present, the CTGA database is centrally maintained in Dubai and hosts entries for nearly 1,540 Mendelian disorders and related genes.
This number is increasing as researchers are joining the largest Arab scientific effort to define genetic disorders described in the region.
[45] Some of the genetic disorders with high frequencies in the Arab world are: hemoglobinopathy, sickle cell anemia, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, and fragile X syndrome (FXS).
[47][48] Specific rare autosomal recessive diseases are high in Arabic countries like Bardet Biedl syndrome, Meckel syndrome, congenital chloride diarrhea, severe childhood autosomal recessive muscular dystrophy (SMARMD), lysosomal storage diseases and PKU are high in the Gulf states.
[54][55] Mothers could test for genetic disorders in the fetus by method of chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis.
Consanguinity (interbreeding, marriage between cousins, inside the family, the clan, the tribe, or even country especially small countries like Kuwait, to preserve fortunes in the family or clan or tribe especially after the Oil discovery in Gulf) is the main cause of Arabic genetic diseases, in addition to mutagens such as environmental factors such as the oil industry and radiological waste dumps in sea and land.
Carrier frequency of the intellectual disability is three times more than that of sickle cell disease and thalassemia among the Arab population with 25–60% consanguinity rates.
33 genes (observed phenotype) were identified among the pre-screened multiplex consanguineous families with neurogenetic disorders.
Since Arabic populations tend to have Arabic paternal ancestry, mainly the Arabian male Y- J1 haplogroup especially j1-P58 There is much more diversity amongst the maternal ancestries gene pool, but historically poor countries such as Yemen and Arabian peninsula lack female ancestry diversity, as seen most in greater Syria Iraq and Egypt that have extra maternal haplogroups than the Middle East- associated maternal (aka mito or mitochondrial) HV1b, U, U5, M1, R0a haplogroups, and the traditional consanguinity that had increased due to oil fortune preservation trend, significantly trumped up the genetic diseases and genetic predisposition for such diseases that are becoming "new" in nature, ie unknown yet to discover and understand the etiology and prepare treatments or prevention.
[29] Since over 70% of Arab genetic disorders are autosomal-recessive, meaning the defective gene has to be found in both father and mother, and since the gene pool is similar in population males and females alike since autosomal chromosomes are admixture from father and mother, in closed societies marriages from same sect endogamy, or same tribe or even from same country, or even from the same block of countries since it is similar in geographical blocks as shown in the online brochures referenced above.