The Life Expectancy of People with Down Syndrome (by Race)

by lisa, 10 hours ago at 10:55 am

Most of us familiar with Down’s Syndrome know that it brings characteristic facial features and delayed or impaired cognitive development. People with Down, however, are also more vulnerable than the general population to diabetes, leukemia, and infectious and autoimmune disease, and about 40% are born with heart defects.

For most of history, then, the life expectancy of people with Down was very low. But, with advances in knowledge and access to health care, life expectancy has risen dramatically… especially for white people:



he Centers for Disease Control explain that severity of Down does not vary by race, so most likely the cause of the gap in life expectancy is differences in the quantity and quality of health care.

Possibilities include differences in factors that may be associated with improved health in the general population such as socioeconomic status, education, community support, medical or surgical treatment of serious complications, or access to, use of, or quality of preventative health care.

More:
http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/05/03/the-life-expectancy-of-people-with-downs-syndrom/

Something interesting must have happened in 1992-1994


Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/allisonkilkenny/status/13326799375

And melanin is important why? Because if affects UVB absorption (and thus, vitamin D production).

I'd be looking at the vitamin D (and related) pathways.

But, you know, I don't ever recall seeing a non-white Down Syndrome child--seriously. Never seen an Asian, Latino, nor A. American Down syndrome child. Of course they occur, so I am wondering how this is possible. So, I had to take a look at prevalence of Down syndrome by race/ethnicity...

A recent article in Pediatrics looked at this and found "the pooled prevalence of DS among children and adolescents was lower among non-Hispanic black individuals and other racial/ethnic groups compared with non-Hispanic white individuals;" So, perhaps this is explained by a higher frequency of either natural stillbirth or therapeutic abortion among women of other races carrying a Down syndrome child.... http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/124/6/1565

At any rate, there are lots of confounding factors in the OP's stats.