Craniospinal rachischisis is a rare and severe form of neural tube defects (NTDs), which is always fatal. It is characterized by anencephaly accompanied by a bony defect of the spine and exposure of neural tissue. We describe the two patients with ultrasonographic and magnetic resonance imaging appearance of craniospinal rachischisis totalis, detected antenatally at 22 and 25 weeks of gestation...

A family is described with congenital hydrocephalus occurring in two pregnancies following the birth of a child with a neural tube defect (NTD). Prenatal diagnosis of hydrocephalus at mid-gestation was achieved by ultrasonography. The increased frequency of hydrocephalus among sibs of probands with a NTD and vice versa suggests that, following the birth of a child with either malformations, sub...

Bipotent axial stem cells residing in the caudal epiblast during late gastrulation generate neuroectodermal and presomitic mesodermal progeny that coordinate somitogenesis with neural tube formation, but the mechanism that controls these two fates is not fully understood. Retinoic acid (RA) restricts the anterior extent of caudal fibroblast growth factor 8 (Fgf8) expression in both mesoderm and...

background: spina bifida and anencephaly are among serious and fatal anomalies in infants that may lead to a 50-70% of reduction in incidence when folic acid is consumed before conception. methods: in a cross sectional study, 2997 pregnant women were evaluated to determine the level of their knowledge and practice about using folic acid in fars province, southern iran. results: eighty percent o...

objective while the effects of folic acid are well established in prevention of neural tube defects (ntds), these diseases have a high prevalence in iran. in order to encourage folic acid supplement use in pregnancy, it is important to promote the awareness of women of childbearing age regarding folic acid importance in preventing ntds. the aim of the present study was to study the knowledge an...

Biomaterial scaffold architecture has not been investigated as a tunable source of influence on spinal cord regeneration. This study compared regeneration in a transected spinal cord within various designed-macro-architecture scaffolds to determine if these architectures alone could enhance regeneration. Three-dimensional (3-D) designs were created and molds were built on a 3-D printer. Salt-le...

Morphine administration during pregnancy causes several behavioral abnormalities in offspring animals. In the present study the effects of maternal morphine consumption on development of neural tube in Wistar rats (250-300 g) were investigated. Female rats (n = 8 were crossed with male rats and pregnant ones were treated with oral morphine (0.01, 0.05 and 0.1 mg/ml of water) until the 10th day ...