Developmental dysplasia of the hip incidence in Ethiopian Jews revisited: 7-year prospective study.

We describe the sonographic and true incidence of developmental dysplasia of the hip among Ethiopian Jews compared with the general Israeli population. Previous results were based on a small number of Jewish Ethiopian children; this study is based on over 7 years of experience, during which 34,048 newborns, 768 of whom were Ethiopian, were examined clinically and sonographically. The incidence of sonographic developmental hip dysplasia was 5.5% in the general Israeli population, compared with 1.24% for the Ethiopian Jews. True developmental hip dysplasia incidence for Arabs and other Jews was 0.51%, as compared with 0.15% in the Ethiopians. Our data support the theory that either a single unknown gene or a multiple gene system plays a major role in the incidence of the dysplasia.