Strictly Come Dancing's Chris McCausland says 'there's nothing' as he shares fears for daughter

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Comedian Chris McCausland has said he and his wife will have to “wait and see” if their daughter has the condition that saw him and other members of his family go blind.

Chris, 47, is currently competing in the 22nd series of Strictly Come Dancing alongside professional Dianne Buswell. Speaking to Gyles Brandreth on his Rosebud podcast, Chris talked about the recent birth of his daughter and how he and his wife Patricia aren't able to know whether or not she would develop retinitis pigmentosa like him.

Chris told Gyles, 76, about the struggles he went through to get a diagnosis and how the situation has changed since. He revealed: “If the genome was a map of the United Kingdom, they think my problem is maybe somewhere in south west London but they haven’t narrowed it down to a specific gene yet. “But it meant that when my daughter was born we wanted to know whether she would have it and of course, there’s just no test there’s nothing. “The analogue tests they do now are a lot more technological, they can check the electrical signals of the optic nerve as you’re looking at things and see whether it's as strong as it should be and all these kinds of things, but nothing definitive.

It’s all just wait and see.” Chris also touched on what it was like when he was younger and the limitations of the diagnostic technology both then and now: “When I was a kid this is how primitive it was, they even gave me glasses at one point.