Black children with Down syndrome don't live as long
Interesting news out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: By age 20, blacks with Down syndrome are more than seven times as likely to die as whites.
Several factors affect the chances of survival, including race, presence of a heart defect, and low birth weight. Nearly half of all children with Down syndrome have a congenital heart defect.
The CDC gathered its data by indentifying infants with Down syndrome in a five-county area of metropolitan Atlanta, and determined when these children died using death certificates and medical records. Read more here.
Down syndrome occurs in approximately one in 800 live-born infants. The study doesn't offer any reasons for the racial disparity, but it's an interesting situation to ponder.