Fabrice Muamba has revealed all three of his sons have inherited the faulty gene which led to him developing a heart condition before his on-pitch collapse having suffered a cardiac arrest.
On March 17, 2012, Muamba dropped to the ground during the FA Cup quarter-final between Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspurs after his heart stopped. It took medics an excruciating 78 minutes to resuscitate the then-23-year-old.
Now, in an interview with HELLO! magazine, the 33-year-old has revealed all three of his children inherited the same gene behind the horrifying collapse.
He said his sons - 13-year-old Joshua, Matthew, eight, and Gabriel, five - had all been tested, and shared the same faulty gene that caused him to develop hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition where part of the heart muscle grows thicker.
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Muamba and wife Shauna had to make the difficult decision to pull all three of the young athletes out of prestigious training academies to protect their health.
Although the condition will not have an impact on daily life for most people diagnosed with it, with some people not having any symptoms or even realising they're affected, taking part in competitive sports can be dangerous.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common cause of sudden death in children and young athletes, as the walls of the heart stiffen, making it harder for the muscle to pump blood through the body. According to the British Heart Foundation, the most common cause of the condition is a mutation in one of the genes inherited from your parents.
Wife Shauna said : "The gene is called RMB20 and it can mutate at any time. Intense exercise exacerbates the risk, which is basically what happened to Fab.
"As a parent, you want your children to be able to follow their dreams, but when you know it could potentially kill them, it's a call you have to make. There's a 50/50 chance of inheriting it and unfortunately, all three of our boys have."
Muamba started coaching a youth football team in Rochdale in 2018, and has campaigned for defibrillators to be more widely available. Speaking after Danish footballer Christian Eriksen, then 29, had an almost identical collapse during a Euros game against Finland last year, he said: "No one realises how important a defibrillator is until they are in a situation where they need one - the difference of having one could be life or death.
"I was extremely fortunate to be surrounded by the best medics with the right equipment when I suffered my cardiac arrest. But I know that others are not as lucky because they don’t have access to a defibrillator quickly enough."
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