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Are There Two Maternal Age Groups in Down's Syndrome?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

P. A. P. Moran
P. A. P. Moran*
Affiliation:
Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, P.O. Box 4, Canberra, Australia
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Extract

Penrose and Smith (1966) have reviewed the literature on Down's syndrome in great detail, and this has been followed by an important recent review by Richards (1973). In Chapters 10 and 11 of Penrose and Smith's book they discuss the remarkable frequency distribution of the ages of mothers of patients, compared with that of the general population at the corresponding place and time, and they summarize the large number of studies made on this subject. The mean age of the mothers is shifted upwards by amounts which vary in different countries from about 6 to 8 years. The remarkable feature, however, is that there appear to be two bumps in the curve. These are usually (but not always) not large enough to make the curve bimodal, and J. B. S. Haldane therefore coined the term ‘bitangentiality’ for this phenomenon, which appears in most published studies and in the group of all sample cases (9,441) given by Penrose and Smith, Fig. 76. Collmann and Stoller (1962) make a complete survey of all mongol births in Victoria, Australia, from 1942 to 1957 and here there is a distinct bimodality.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 124 , Issue 582 , May 1974 , pp. 453 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1974 

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References

Collmann, R. D., and Stoller, A. (1962). ‘A survey of mongoloid births in Victoria, Australia, 1942–1957.’ Amer. J. pub. Health, 52, 813–29.Google ScholarPubMed
Cowie, V., and Slater, E. T. (1971). Psychiatric Genetics. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, N. (1957). ‘Relation between maternal age at parturition and incidence of mental disease in the offspring.’ Brit. J. prev. soc. Med., 11, 203–13.Google ScholarPubMed
Penrose, L. S. (1967). ‘The effect of change of maternal age distribution upon the incidence of Mongolism.’ J. ment. Def. Res., 11, 54–7.Google ScholarPubMed
Penrose, L. S., and Smith, G. F. (1966). Down's Anomaly. London: Churchill.Google Scholar
Richards, B. W. (1973). ‘Mongols and their mothers.’ Brit. J. Psychiat., 122, 1–14.Google ScholarPubMed
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