European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Background: Mental retardation is a serious and lifelong disability that places heavy demands on society and health system. Since the first publication on this topic, the prevalence of mental retardation has been thoroughly studied for different purposes in different parts of the country as well as different parts of the World. Consanguinity marriage of parent as an apparent etiological factors of mental retardation Method: This is descriptive study with the 100 consecutive samplings in a tertiary centre where the diagnosis of mental retardation was made based on Malian’s Intelligence Scale for Indian Children validated by the Department of psychiatry, Silchar Medical College and were evaluated for socio-demographic profile of the parents.the study was done after clearance from institute ethical committee. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 19. Chi square test was used and p value of less than 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Result.  Correlating mental retardation with consanguinity of marriage of the parents we find that most of the parents are consanguineous marriage (72%) and all the 3 cases of profoundly retarded child also coming from consanguineous marriage group (P=0.0269) Conclusion: Though the results are different in different studies it definitely appears that consanguinity is strongly associated with mental retardation of the children. Statistically not significant is found in our present study.