Cystic Fibrosis is the most common life-threatening inherited disease in the US. It is estimated that there are 10-15 million people that carry the disease.

There are two forms of CF - those with symptoms and those without. Most often, people with the disease are symptomless, which means that their health is not affected.  When 2 symptomless people have a child, 25% of the time, their child is born without CF; 50% of the time, their child has symptomless CF, and the remainder receive the symptom version of the disease.  95% of those with symptoms end up dying from respiratory failure.

The numbers are staggering.  Over 10 million Americans have some form of CF.  This is 3% of the population or 1 out of every 35 people.  If you think of a classroom with 35 children, 1 of them has CF and may not even know it.  Granted, it's generally the symptomless version.

There are approximately 30,000 in the US with the full version of the disease, and 3 people are added to the list every day.

Information from this article was obtained with permission from Cffutah's article, Think you know what Cystic Fibrosis is?