Consanguinity and recurrence risk of stillbirth and infant death.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to estimate the recurrence risk for stillbirth and infant death and compare results for offspring of first-cousin parents with results for offspring of unrelated parents. METHODS: The study population consisted of all single births with a previous sibling born in Norway between 1967 and 1994. Altogether, 629,888 births were to unrelated parents, and 3466 births were to parents who were first cousins. The risk of stillbirth and infant death was estimated for subsequent siblings contingent on parental consanguinity and survival of the previous sibling. RESULTS: For unrelated parents, the risk of early death (stillbirth plus infant death) for the subsequent sibling was 17 of 1000 if the previous child survived and 67 of 1000 if the previous child died before 1 year of age. For parents who were first cousins, the risk of early death for the subsequent sibling was 29 of 1000 if the previous child survived and 116 of 1000 if the previous child died. CONCLUSIONS: The risk of recurrence of stillbirth and infant death is higher for offspring of first-cousin parents compared with offspring of unrelated parents.

UK Pakistani views on the adverse health risks associated with consanguineous marriages

“…This highlights some misunderstanding about genetic disorders and the risks associated with consanguinity, which is associated with higher incidence of autosomal recessive disorders (Hoodfar and Teebi 1996;Woods et al 2006). Certain severe autosomal recessive disorders may lead to death before birth or very early after birth (Bittles 2012;Sørbye et al 2014;Stoltenberg et al 1999), hence possibly never getting to an age where the children may become visible to the community in disability centres or hospitals. Another reason for being sceptical about the evidence on consanguineous marriages and genetic risk, as suggested from the participant responses, is the stigma associated with genetic conditions related to cousin marriage may force consanguineous couples to either refute genetic information or not relay the information to immediate family and the wider community (Bywaters et al 2003;Croot et al 2008;Paul and Spencer 2008;Shaw and Hurst 2009) thus preventing dissemination of information on genetic risk related to consanguinity, a fact corroborated by the local genetic counsellor serving the area (Ajaz 2013).…”

Is consanguinity prevalence decreasing in Saudis?: A study in two generations

“…On the other hand, adverse effects of consanguinity in terms of reproductive behaviour, reproductive wastage, higher morbidity and mortality and genetic problems have been described extensively in the literature [10,17,31,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. One of the major harmful effects is a higher frequency of rare autosomal recessive disorders in the offspring of consanguineous mating [17,16].…”

Consanguineous marriages

“…Individual studies can give different risk figures dictated by various factors, including factors inherent to the studied populations. For example, in Norway, the risk of stillbirth and infant deaths among first cousin couples was 1.7 times that for unrelated parents (Stoltenberg et al 1999).…”