Studies of antithyroid antibodies in Down's syndrome

Abstract

Based on the fact that autoimmunity may lead to cromosome aberrations and that the antithyroid antibodies are found in a number of patients with Down's syndrome as well in part of their respective mothers, some publications suggested that the antithyroid antibodies of the mother could lead to Down's syndrome in the child. In the present work we studied the incidence of antithyroid antibodies in patients with Down's syndrome and in their respective mothers to verify the incidence of these antibodies.Forty non-institutionalized patients clinically and cytogenetically characterized as suffering from Down's sndrome were selected. The age of the patients ranged from 5 months, to 21 years old, 24 of them being males and 1$ females: the mothers of these patients, whose ages varied from 22 to 66 years old, were also studied. The methods