Congenital anomalies are ten times more common in children with neurodevelopmental disorders
Last reviewed: 14.06.2024
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Children with neurodevelopmental disorders report congenital anomalies, such as heart and/or urinary tract defects, at least ten times more often than other children.
This is one of the results of an analysis conducted by the Radboud University Medical Center based on data from more than 50,000 children. Thanks to this new database, it is now much clearer which health problems are associated with a specific neurodevelopmental disorder and which are not. The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Two to three percent of the population has a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism or mental retardation. These disorders are often accompanied by other health problems or are part of an underlying syndrome, requiring additional medical attention for the child. Until now, it was not known how often these additional health problems occur.
"It's strange," says clinical geneticist Bert de Vries. "Because it interferes with the proper care of this special group of children."
De Vries and his colleagues collected medical data from more than 50,000 children with neurodevelopmental disorders. They started with data from nearly 1,500 children with neurodevelopmental disorders who visited Radboud University Medical Center's clinical genetics unit over the past ten years.
"However, this was a relatively small group of children. Larger numbers are needed to draw conclusions about the whole group," explains De Vries.
So medical researcher Lex Dingemans then searched the entire medical literature on neurodevelopmental disorders. "This has been a huge task since the first relevant paper in 1938 by Professor Penrose of London," says Dingemans.
He found more than 9,000 published studies. Ultimately, approximately seventy articles provided enough useful and high-quality data to identify additional health problems in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Thus, a database was created with data from more than 51 thousand children.
Analysis of this data provided new insights. First, children with neurodevelopmental disorders have been found to have at least ten times more congenital anomalies compared to other children in the general population, such as abnormalities of the heart, skull, urinary tract, or hip. In addition, the database maps the medical consequences of new syndromes.
Dingemans explains: "For many syndromes that cause neurodevelopmental disorders, the question arises to what extent other health problems are associated with them. Now that the numbers of these problems in children with neurodevelopmental disorders are known, we can much better determine what is is actually part of the syndrome and what is not." This opens up opportunities for better guidance or even treatment of children.
Neurodevelopmental disorders are genetic in nature. Currently, more than 1,800 causative genes are known.
“To better understand these genetic causes, we globally use databases that combine DNA data from more than 800,000 people,” says Lisenka Vissers, professor of translational genomics. "Our database complements this by allowing researchers around the world to link genetic knowledge to specific health problems in neurodevelopmental disorders."