PURPOSE To assess the regional patterns of infant mortality due to lethal congenital anomalies, and the potential reasons for the regional patterns. METHOD The study analyzed 2,507 infant deaths due to lethal congenital anomalies among 1,178,452 live births in 9 of the 12 Canadian provinces and territories from 1990 to 1995 recorded in Statistics Canada's live birth and death data bases. RE...

During a prospective study of 3500 consecutive births from November 1985 to January 1987 at three hospitals, 40 babies were found to have neural tube defects, an extremely high incidence (11.4/1000 births). The defects comprised anencephaly (n = 18), meningomyelocele (n = 11), Arnold-Chiari deformity (n = 3), encephalocele (n = 3), iniencephaly (n = 2), and one each of occipital meningocele, sp...

Data from the Finnish Register of Congenital Malformations for the years 1965-73 were used in a search for associations between environmental influences and defects of the central nervous system (CNS). The material consisted of 710 cases of CNS defects and their matched-pair controls. Moreover, and 'internal' control group of 259 cases of polydactyly and their matched-pair controls were used. T...

Each year in the United States approximately 2500 infants are born with spina bifida and anencephaly (1), and an estimated 1500 fetuses affected by these birth defects are aborted. Recent studies indicate that the B vitamin folic acid can reduce the risk for spina bifida and anencephaly by at least 50% when consumed daily before conception and during early pregnancy. In September 1992, the Publ...

Iniencephaly is an extremely rare neural tube defect characterized by the triad of fixed retroflexion of the head, variable degrees of cervical lordosis and dysraphism, and an occipital bone defect involving the foramen magnum. Incidence ranges from 0.1 to 10 in 10,000. Although there have been cases of iniencephaly reported as an isolated anomaly, it very rarely occurs alone. We report here a ...

Periconceptional intake of folic acid has demonstrated to be effective to reduce the frequency of neural tube defects, and food fortification has been one of the strategies implemented to increase it. An update is herein presented on the reduced prevalence of neural tube defect cases in the post-fortification period in Argentina and an estimation of cases averted in the 2005-2013 period as a re...

THE aetiology of anencephaly and/or spina bifida (neural tube defects) is still obscure. Most investigators are now agreed on a multifactorial causation with an important genetic factor and a substantial environmental component. The genetic factor is probably polygenic, but the mechanism by which it acts remains unknown. Recently, drugs that stimulate ovulation, particularly clomiphene, have be...

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are congenital malformations of the brain and spinal cord caused by the failure of neural tubes to close between 21 and 28 days after conception (Sadler, 2005). Any disruption of neurulation during or prior to this time may result in a defect or failure of neural tube closure. Non-invasive prenatal diagnostic testing by ultrasound and maternal serum screening, which s...