Folic acid and the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene have both been implicated in the etiology of orofacial clefts. The authors selected 261 case-parent triads (173 cases with cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) and 88 cases with cleft palate only (CPO)) from a Norwegian population-based study of orofacial clefts (May 1996-1998). A case-parent triad design was used to e...

OBJECTIVE To assess the incidence of cleft lip and palate defects in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. DESIGN SETTING The study was conducted in 2001 in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The state has a population of 76 million. Three districts, Cuddapah, Medak and Krishna, were identified for this study owing to their diversity. They were urban, semi-urban and rural, respectively. Litera...

BACKGROUND Suggestive, but not conclusive, studies implicate many genetic variants in oral cleft etiology. We used a large, ethnically homogenous study population to test whether reported associations between nonsyndromic oral clefts and 12 genes (CLPTM1, CRISPLD2, FGFR2, GABRB3, GLI2, IRF6, PTCH1, RARA, RYK, SATB2, SUMO1, TGFA) could be confirmed. METHODS Thirty-one single nucleotide polymor...

OBJECTIVES Determination of the psychosocial status and assessment of the level of satisfaction in Malaysian cleft palate patients and their parents. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Sixty cleft lip and palate patients (12 to 17 years of age) from Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia and their parents were selected. The questionnaires used were the Child Interview Schedu...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the performance of the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), in measuring overall health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in children with oral clefts relative to the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 (PedsQL™) Generic Core Scales, one of the most validated and commonly used methods to measure pediatric HRQoL. METHODS The study included a population-based sample of 307 chil...

UNLABELLED Background Several studies have examined the effects of folic acid fortification on the occurrence of orofacial clefts. This study was carried out to evaluate the impact of flour fortification with folic acid on oral clefts in Northern Iran. METHODS In this hospital based study from March 2006 to September 2009, we screened the total number of live births at all hospitals in Golest...

The accurate identification of ligand binding sites in protein structures can be valuable in determining protein function. Once the binding site is known, it becomes easier to perform in silico and experimental procedures that may allow the ligand type and the protein function to be determined. For example, binding pocket shape analysis relies heavily on the correct localization of the ligand b...

In this paper, we examine two main approaches to the syntax and semantics of itclefts as in ‘It was Ohno who won’: an expletive approach where the cleft pronoun is an expletive and the cleft clause bears a direct syntactic or semantic relation to the clefted constituent, and a discontinuous constituent approach where the cleft pronoun has a semantic content and the cleft clause bears a direct s...