Wayne State study says stuttering isn’t your nerves, it’s your genes

A new study from Wayne State University and partners is changing the way scientists and the public understand stuttering. Researchers studied genetic data from 1.1 million 23andMe customers and found 57 DNA regions linked to stuttering, some tied to how the brain processes speech and rhythm. Shelly Jo Kraft, a geneticist and speech-language pathologist at Wayne State University, who co-authored the study, said it gave her team a rare opportunity to study more than 99,000 people who stutte “It really helped to propel this huge architectural description of stuttering and even create profiles for us based on every race, ethnicity and gender,” Kraft explained. Stuttering usually begins in children between ages two and five. While most recover, about one in five continue into adulthood.