What is the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome?
This is a more complicated question than it seems, because how you answer it depends on how you look at the statistics. First, looking at how long adults with DS live: the last major published article to look at this was in California in 1991, and the results in that study may not be the same for any other place in the world. But that study looked at over 12,000 people with DS and found that major medical problems were not a consistent predictor of mortality, which was a common belief. Instead, self-help skills were the best predictor of life expectancy. Adults with DS and good self-help skills (mobility, self-feeding) could be expected to live into their 50s, while those with poor self-help skills were expected to live into their 40s. (Eyman RK, Amer J Mental Retard, 95(6): 603-612,1991) However, it would be foolish to predict how long a baby born now with DS would live as so many things can change for them medically and socially in the next decades. Looking at this question from a sl
