Males With Birth Defects Have Shorter Lives, Research Shows

Males born with birth defects do not live as long as males without them, have fewer children, and are more likely to have children with birth defects, Norwegian researchers report in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. They studied 486,207 males born in Norway between 1967 and 1982. By 1992, only 84% of those with birth defects had survived, compared with 97% of those with none. Among men with the defects, 5.1% of their children had birth defects, compared with only 2.1% of children of fathers with no defects.

*

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II