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Down syndrome and paternal age, a new analysis of case–control data collected in the 1960s
Author(s) -
De Souza Elizabeth,
Alberman Eva,
Morris Joan K.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american journal of medical genetics part a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.064
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1552-4833
pISSN - 1552-4825
DOI - 10.1002/ajmg.a.32850
Subject(s) - paternal age , odds ratio , demography , logistic regression , down syndrome , odds , medicine , association (psychology) , advanced maternal age , case control study , meta analysis , pregnancy , psychology , biology , genetics , fetus , offspring , psychiatry , sociology , psychotherapist
There has been a long‐running debate about the association between paternal age and Down syndrome. Some studies have failed to adequately control for maternal age, and have suffered from high levels of missing paternal age, raising concerns over selection bias. This paper analyzes an anonymously case‐controlled dataset with 98% complete parental age data, originally collected to investigate the association between parental exposure to radiation and Down syndrome. In our methods the cases and controls were matched on maternal age to within 6 months, and conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio associated with a 10‐year increase in paternal age. Our results showed the estimated odds ratio for a Down syndrome pregnancy associated with a 10‐year increase in paternal age was 1.13, 95%CI (0.85, 1.52). There was no statistically significant evidence of an association between paternal age and Down syndrome, but the estimated association was positive. The size of the estimated effect is much smaller than the effect of maternal age. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.