1. Population prevalence of Down's syndrome in the United Kingdom
- Author
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Omar Khwaja, Christoph Wandel, Nadia Foskett, Myriam Alexander, H Petri, and Y Ding
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Down syndrome ,Pediatrics ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Population ,030105 genetics & heredity ,Abortion ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,medicine ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Young adult ,education ,Primary care database ,education.field_of_study ,S syndrome ,business.industry ,Rehabilitation ,medicine.disease ,Confidence interval ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Neurology ,Life expectancy ,Neurology (clinical) ,business ,Demography - Abstract
Background Aim was to estimate the age and sex-stratified prevalence of Down's syndrome (DS) in the United Kingdom (UK) general population using a large primary care database. Method Data source was the Clinical Practice Research Datalink. We divided the number of individuals with a record of DS present on 01/07/2014 by the total number of individuals, and computed Wilson's confidence intervals. Prevalence by age and sex was represented using local linear smoothing plots. Results On July 1st 2014, 1159 females and 1317 males with DS were present in the data, corresponding to a prevalence of 5.9 per 10 000 (95% CI: 5.5; 6.2) in females and 6.8 (6.5; 7.2) per 10 000 in males. Prevalence of DS was increased in individuals aged 40 to 55 years compared to adjacent age groups. Conclusions A relative peak prevalence of DS at age 40–55 years may be attributed to the combined effects of a rise in life expectancy and the still limited availability of selective abortion.
- Published
- 2016
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