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Discovery
English physician and advocate for people with intellectual disabilities, John Langdon Down, links a population with distinct physical characteristics to decreased intellectual ability and calls them “mongoloid” -
Link between birth and downsyndrome
An initial association between premature birth and down syndrome is found by researchers. -
Life expectancy
Life expectancy for people with downsyndrome is only 9 years -
Cause
Nondisjunction is first suggested as a cause of downsyndrome. Nondisjunction is the failure of homologous chromosomes or sister chromatids to separate properly during cell division -
Life expectancy and institutions
Life expectancy is only 12 years. Benjamin Spock suggests babies born with downsyndrome should immediately be institutionalized based on the premise that the infant is barely human. He believed it was much better for the other children and the parents to have him cared for elsewhere. -
Discovery
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, a French physician and advocate for people with intellectual disabilities, discovers that downsyndrome is the result of a chromosomal abnormality – three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. The term Trisomy 21 starts to gain usage in the medical community to describe people with the condition. -
New name
Researchers discover a type of Trisomy 21 called Mosaicism. A prestigious group of 20 biomedical researchers sign a letter to the Lancet objecting to the term mongolism. They propose several alternative terms including Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome anomaly -
IQ scores
Research is published that describes the impact of stimulation on infants and children with Down syndrome and compares the IQs of children raised in institutions versus those raised at home. Children with Down syndrome raised in institutions had an average IQ of 20 to 30, while those raised at home with no specific attention to stimulation averaged about 40, and those raised at home with stimulation had an average IQ of 55. This study also found that IQ declines with age in people with Down synd -
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is now at 60 years and has vastly improved over the years, Down syndrome becomes the least-funded major genetic condition by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Funding for Down syndrome research hits an all-time low of $14 million, or 0.0005 percent of the NIH’s $28.5 billion budget. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates the new prevalence of Down syndrome to be 1 in 733 live births. -
Treatments
NIH forms the Down Syndrome Consortium. Official guidelines for how genetic counselors can better assist and guide parents who receive news they are pregnant with or have a newborn with Down syndrome are released.
By 2011, a total of ten different drug treatments have been shown to correct learning and memory deficits and some cellular abnormalities in the Ts65Dn mouse model of Down syndrome. The drugs have very different properties and many are FDA-approved, spurring interest in pursuing clini
