Measuring the public health impact of the aneuploidies.

If the protection of man against mutagenic agents in general, and against those that cause aneuploidies in particular, is to have an increasingly rational basis with the passage of time, quantitative or at least semiquantitative assessments of risks are needed. These should take into account both the likely numbers of induced cases and the likely severities of the different conditions. In the past, quantitative data relating to severity have been limited or nonexistent, but the data sources exist by which follow-up studies may be carried out to determine age-specific and cumulative risks of hospitalization and death, the durations of hospital stays, and the economic burden to society which these represent. To illustrate the use of such sources, the cumulative risks of death in children with anomalies of the autosomes and of the sex chromosomes, over the first 19 years of life, are compared with those for other kinds of hereditary and environmentally caused handicaps that are reported in that age group.