There is someone in my family who is a middle-aged person. He has 3 rare medical conditions all of which are not considered to be life threatening.
Generally speaking, is there a good chance that these conditions are related in some way? Is developing mild medical conditions just a fact of aging?
If it helps, I can try to find out what the conditions are.
what degree of rare, like 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000,000?
Your question is unanswerable without knowing the rare diseases.
As someone studying genetics and developmental biology, I have a suspicion that there are an awful lot of unique genetic conditions that cause a cluster of mild symptoms.
Until very recently we could only learn about genetic conditions if there was a very clear disease state and good records of inheritance patterns. We’re now able to find genetic defects in individuals with a particular disease. For example, if you sequence the genomes of autistic people, you’ll find “de novo mutations” in brain development genes in a substantial minority of cases.
I’d bet that we’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to de novo mutations causing relatively subtle diseases.
I would agree with this.
“Middle-aged” isn’t terrible specific, either. And, jeez, OP, without even knowing if these conditions affect the person’s heart, bones, immune system etc. we couldn’t even hazard a WAG if they’re related.
Ok, I will try to find out.