Abstract
Over the past 25 years, 254 women with congenital heart defects (CHD) originally seen between 1947-1960 have participated in a prospective study of their pregnancies, and repeated examinations of their offspring for the first three years according to a set protocol. The over-all incidence of CHD in these children was 15.6%. Over the past three years, the progeny of men with CHD from this same population have been examined to try to substantiate the hypothesis that offspring of affected women are more likely to have CHD than are the offspring of affected men. To date we have examined 308 offspring of 151 men of whom 12.3% are proven to be affected, but this difference is not statistically significant. The only significant differences are in the greater recurrence among the offspring of women than in the offspring of men with left sided obstruction (23% vs. 9.5%, P<.05) and ventricular septal defect (22.3% vs. 10%, P<.05) but the difference in risk of recurrence of VSD becomes insignificant when one corrects for the number of VSDs that closed during the 3 year period of observation of the maternal offspring. In the offsnring of the 15 women with genetic syndrome or strong family history, 56% were affected (15/27) but of the 5 men with similar history, 60% (6/10) are affected to date. Concordance of defects with that of the parent was 51% in the maternal study and 45% to date in the paternal study. The over-all risk of recurrence of CHD does not appear to depend upon the sex of the affected parent.
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Whittemore, R., Wells, J. & Wright, M. RECURRENCE OF CONGENITAL HEART DEFECTS IN PROGENY OF AFFECTED MEN VS. WOMEN. Pediatr Res 21 (Suppl 4), 196 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198704010-00178
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198704010-00178