Galactosemia (British Galactosaemia) is a rare genetic metabolic disorder that affects an individual's ability to metabolize the sugar galactose properly. Galactosemia follows an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance that confers a deficiency in an enzyme responsible for adequate galactose degradation.
Friedrich Goppert (1870–1927), a German physician, first described the disease in 1917,[1] with its cause as a defect in galactose metabolism being identified by a group led by Herman Kalckar in 1956.[2]
Its incidence is about 1 per 60,000 births for people of European ancestry. In other populations the incidence rate differs. Galactosemia is ten times more common within the Irish Traveller population