Familial persistent developmental stuttering: disfluencies and prevalence

Abstract: PURPOSE: to characterize and to compare the frequency of speech disfluency in adults with familial persistent developmental stuttering in males and females, the stuttering severity and then to determinate the familial prevalence and the sexual ratio of stuttering among the families members of the probands. METHODS: participants were 30 adults who stutter (ages between 18 and 53 years old), divided in two groups: one with 20 males, and the other with 10 females. Data were gathered by clinical and familial history, fluency assessment and Stuttering Severity Instrument. RESULTS: the percentages of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD) (p=0.352), of other disfluencies (OD) (p=0.947) and of total disfluencies (TD) (p=0.522) were similar between the males and females. The participants showed a mean of 5.23% of SLD and 5.5% of OD. The mild subgroup was the prevalent among the participants (83.3%). The male families' members showed greater risk to stutter when compared to the females (p<0.001). The results of 1002 families' members showed 85 familiars with stuttering, which 53 were male and 32 female. CONCLUSIONS: there were no differences between the males and females concerning to the analyzed measures. Regarding the frequency of disfluencies the results show that around a half of total disfluencies was characterized as SLD. The subgroup of familial persistent developmental stuttering was characterized mainly as mild. The risk among relatives of affected probands was 8.5%.The familial prevalence data showed that risk that a person have to manifest stuttering when there is some familial affected was 8.5%.The sexual ratio showed stuttering affecting mainly males than females, and was 3.72:1.