• Utah has, on average, larger family sizes and a significantly higher birth rate than other states.

The average family in Utah today has five children; a generation ago the average number of children was 8; before that it was 10. Utah has experienced incredibly fast population expansion over the past 150 years which creates an ideal environment of extended families of multiple generations to quickly determine heritability of complex diseases.

• Fewer errors occur when studying extended families in Utah because the incidence of “non-paternity” (unknown or incorrectly attributed fathers) is lower.

(<1% among Utah residents verses approximately 10% for the US ).

• Utah is genetically representative of the world at large.

While the population is predominately Caucasian, all ethnic and racial groups are present in our gene discovery collections. In all previous disease gene discoveries in Utah , applicability to other populations has been conclusively proven.

• The population is highly educated and enthusiastic about research and medical advances and the enthusiasm for our studies is particularly high among patients.
  
  
• Families are generally well informed about their personal genealogy and family history.

Family members tend to be knowledgeable about their relatives and keep in touch with them. Family reunions and family newsletters are common.

• The medical care in Utah and in the Intermountain West is centralized in the Salt Lake Metropolitan Area within 50 miles of Axial Biotech’s laboratories and it is of high quality, making confirmation of medical conditions easier.