Parental exposure to X‐irradiation and Down's syndrome

Alberman, Eva; Polani, P. E.; Roberts, J. A. Fraser; Spicer, C. C.; Elliott, M.; Armstrong, Emily A.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.1972.tb00769.x

Cited by 74 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…If, as has been postulated (Uchida et al, 1968;Lilienfeld and Benesch, 1969;Alberman et al, 1972), increased nondisjunction is associated with the cumulative effects of exposure to environmental agents such as radiation or chemicals, it will be interesting to determine whether the areas showing the most rapid decline in mean maternal age and increase in age specific incidence for young mothers of Down syndrome infants also have higher levels of exposure to such environmental factors. Clearly environmental agents such as diagnostic x-rays, nuclear fallout, exposure to pesticides, and other environmental chemicals have become more significant in recent years and women might be expected to be exposed to threshold doses of these factors at an increasingly early age.…”

Section: Incidence Ratesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Down syndrome and recent demographic trends in Manitoba.

Evans¹,

Hunter²,

Hamerton³

1978

Journal of Medical Genetics

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Section: Incidence Ratesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Down syndrome and recent demographic trends in Manitoba.

Evans¹,

Hunter²,

Hamerton³

1978

Journal of Medical Genetics

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“…Alberman et al, 1972). The practical problems raised by these working hypotheses are numerous and often of great professional and social importance, even, perhaps especially, when radiation exposures are small.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ionizing radiation as a carcinogen: practical questions and academic pursuits

Mole¹

1975

BJR

103

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Cancer is naturally very common, and practical questions about the possibility of radiation-induced harm are often questions about what in other contexts would be called background noise. Central to the question of whether small radiation exposures are carcinogenic is the effect of antenatal radiography. A comparison of singleton and twin births with radiography rates of 10 and 55 per cent respectively showed that radiography must be the main cause of the elevated frequency of malignant disease. In Japanese bomb survivors, most radiation-induced cancer has been found in those irradiated in adult life, less in those irradiated in childhood and adolescence, and least for exposure in utero. Specific biological differences between different kinds of malignant disease in their induction by ionizing radiation are becoming increasingly evident. When dose-response relationships for observed cancer frequencies are to be used as evidence about dose-response relationships for cancer induction, it will always be necessary to allow for the concomitant cell sterilization. When this is done, there is little support for linearity as the method of extrapolation when making predictions about possible effects of low doses but the absence of threshold seems scientifically inescapable. In cellular terms, radiation induction of cancer must be a very rare phenomenon, so rare compared with cell sterilization or mutation induction, that the general corpus of radiobiological understanding may be inapplicable.

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“…A similar effect was observed in mothers of children with Down's syndrome by comparison with controls. Moreover, older control mothers (30-39) had received twice as much gonadal exposure to radiation as younger controls (< 30), whereas in the corresponding age groups of mothers of Down's children the increase was eight-fold (Alberman et al, 1972). In a prospective study Uchida et al (1968) examined the pregnancy outcome of 861 mothers who received abdominal X-rays prior to pregnancy with the same number of age matched controls; there were eight cases of Down's syndrome born to the study group, and one to the controls.…”

Section: Chromosome Defectsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Genetics and ageing in man

Roberts

1979

J. Biosoc. Sci.

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Among the conflicts of modern life is that faced by many educated women between the desire to pursue a professional career and the demands of their potential maternal role. Some resolve this by deferring having children. This deferment, coupled with an increased awareness of birth defects generally and of the problems faced by older mothers, leads to an increasing number of queries to genetic advisory services, family doctors, obstetricians, and family planning centres, as to the specific risks in reproduction by older parents. The appreciable risk of death in childbed of earlier days is no longer with us, thanks to modern obstetric techniques. But the child morbidity due to congenital and genetic disorders, already appreciable (Roberts, Chavez & Court, 1970; Roberts, 1975) and increasing both proportionately and absolutely, and the evidence that some of these increase in incidence with age, mean that there is a real basis for the enquirers' concern. The following review of the ways in which parental ageing affects the incidence of such disorders, and of the mechanisms that appear to be responsible, places the increased risks in perspective.

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Parental exposure to X‐irradiation and Down's syndrome

Cited by 74 publications

References 21 publications

Down syndrome and recent demographic trends in Manitoba.

Down syndrome and recent demographic trends in Manitoba.

Ionizing radiation as a carcinogen: practical questions and academic pursuits

Genetics and ageing in man

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