Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jan;15(1):64-9.
doi: 10.1038/gim.2012.93. Epub 2012 Aug 9.

Survival among people with Down syndrome: a nationwide population-based study in Denmark

Jin Liang Zhu  1 , Henrik Hasle, Adolfo Correa, Diana Schendel, J M Friedman, Jørn Olsen, Sonja A Rasmussen
Affiliations

Survival among people with Down syndrome: a nationwide population-based study in Denmark

Jin Liang Zhu et al. Genet Med. 2013 Jan.

Abstract

Purpose: Several studies have shown substantially longer survival among persons with Down syndrome in recent decades. We examined survival patterns among Danish persons with Down syndrome by karyotype.

Methods: A national cohort of 3,530 persons with Down syndrome identified from the Danish Cytogenetic Register and a reference cohort of persons without Down syndrome randomly selected from the general population were followed from 1 April 1968 to 15 January 2009 by linkages to the Register of Causes of Death and the Civil Registration System.

Results: Overall, persons with Down syndrome had higher mortality than the reference cohort but to a lesser degree for persons with mosaic trisomy 21 than for persons with standard trisomy 21 or with Robertsonian translocations (hazard ratio 4.98 (95% confidence interval 3.51-7.08), 8.94 (8.32-9.60), and 10.23 (7.50-13.97), respectively). Among persons with Down syndrome born after April 1968, more recent birth cohorts had lower mortality rates than older birth cohorts, which was largely due to declining mortality among persons with Down syndrome who also had congenital heart defects.

Conclusion: Recent birth cohorts of persons with Down syndrome experienced declining mortality, likely due to treatment for congenital heart defects, and persons with mosaic trisomy 21 had better survival than persons with other Down syndrome karyotypes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

DISCLOSURE

The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Kaplan–meier survival curves for three karyotypes of persons with down syndrome and reference cohort, denmark, 1968–2009
(Number of persons and deaths: 3,272 and 1,000, respectively, for persons with standard trisomy 21, 144 and 41, respectively, for persons with Robertsonian translocations, 114 and 32, respectively, for persons with mosaic trisomy 21, and 70,590 and 4,683, respectively, for the reference cohort)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Improved national prevalence estimates for 18 selected major birth defects–United States, 1999–2001. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2006;54:1301–1305. - PubMed
    1. Mégarbané A, Ravel A, Mircher C, et al. The 50th anniversary of the discovery of trisomy 21: the past, present, and future of research and treatment of Down syndrome. Genet Med. 2009;11:611–616. - PubMed
    1. Cocchi G, Gualdi S, Bower C, et al. International trends of Down syndrome 1993–2004: Births in relation to maternal age and terminations of pregnancies. Birth Defects Res Part A Clin Mol Teratol. 2010;88:474–479. - PubMed
    1. Mikkelsen M, Fischer G, Stene J, Stene E, Petersen E. Incidence study of Down’s syndrome in Copenhagen, 1960–1971; with chromosome investigation. Ann Hum Genet. 1976;40:177–182. - PubMed
    1. Mutton D, Alberman E, Hook EB. Cytogenetic and epidemiological findings in Down syndrome, England and Wales 1989 to 1993. National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register and the Association of Clinical Cytogeneticists. J Med Genet. 1996;33:387–394. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types