Cholelithiasis in Down's syndrome.

Abstract

Cholelithiasis is considered uncommon in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. We performed a prospective, controlled study showing that children with Down's syndrome have a significantly higher prevalence of cholelithiasis (4.7%) compared with controls (0.2%). Clinicians should be aware of the risk of gallstones in children with Down's syndrome.

(Arch Dis Child 2001;85:242-243)

Keywords: Down's syndrome; cholelithiasis; gallstones

Cholelithiasis is uncommon in newborns, infants, children, and adolescents, with a prevalence no greater than 0.5%. [1-3] In paediatric patients, the predisposing factors include prematurity, phototherapy, parenteral nutrition, sepsis, abdominal surgery, short bowel syndrome, anatomic abnormalities of the biliary system, haemolytic disease, and the use of diuretics, narcotic, analgesics and ceftriaxone. [4]

In addition to anecdotal clinical reports, an increased prevalence of cholelithiasis in Down's syndrome (DS) was reported by Llerena and colleagues, [5] who investigated 145 patients and detected 10 with asymptomatic biliary calculi (6.9%).

We describe the first prospective, controlled study showing an association between DS and cholelithiasis in children.

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