[ RadSafe ] Report Reveals 6% of Babies Born with Genetic Birth Defect

Wed Feb 1 10:54:02 CST 2006

Roy,
Thanks for pointing this out.  However, the link you
list does not list an interesting point which is that
birth defects differ widely among the various
countries.  From the following article which was
printed in the Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013100410.html

"Prevalence ranges from a high of 82 defects per 1,000
live births in Sudan to a low of 39.7 per 1,000 in
France. The researchers cautioned that the data aren't
precise enough for detailed country-by-country
comparisons _ but cited poor maternal health care, a
higher percentage of older mothers and greater
frequency of marriage between relatives as leading
risks in low- and middle-income countries."

--------------

Report: 8M With Birth Defects Each Year

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; 9:16 AM

WASHINGTON -- About 8 million children worldwide are
born every year with serious birth defects, many of
them dying before age 5 in a toll largely hidden from
view, the March of Dimes says.

Most birth defects occur in poor countries, where
babies can languish with problems easily fixed or even
prevented in wealthier nations, according to research
released Monday by the organization.

But the researchers said some innovative programs in
Iran and Chile show that effective preventions don't
have to be costly.

Indeed, about 70 percent of birth defects could be
either prevented, repaired or ameliorated, they
concluded.

"We were surprised by the toll," said epidemiologist
Christopher Howson with the March of Dimes, which
sponsored the five-year project after doctors
complained that birth defects often are ignored as a
public health problem.

"It's like the tip of an iceberg that is rising out of
the ocean," noticed only after infant mortality from
other causes drops, he said.

Specialists said the report focuses much-needed
attention on a concern of every parent-to-be.

"Most people think of birth defects as something that
is not preventable," said Dr. Jose Cordero, the U.S.
assistant surgeon general and birth defects chief at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There
are great opportunities to ensure that babies are born
healthy."

Some 7.9 million children a year are born with serious
birth defects caused at least partly by a genetic
flaw, such as heart defects, spina bifida and other
neural tube defects, sickle cell anemia and Down
syndrome.

Undoubtedly hundreds of thousands more are born with
defects caused not by genes but by post-conception
problems: mothers infected with rubella or syphilis,
which can damage their babies' brains; certain
medications or alcohol; lack of dietary iodine. But
too few countries count those defects for a good
estimate.

At least 3.3 million children under age 5 die each
year because of birth defects, and millions more are
mentally or physically disabled.

Prevalence ranges from a high of 82 defects per 1,000
live births in Sudan to a low of 39.7 per 1,000 in
France. The researchers cautioned that the data aren't
precise enough for detailed country-by-country
comparisons _ but cited poor maternal health care, a
higher percentage of older mothers and greater
frequency of marriage between relatives as leading
risks in low- and middle-income countries.

Additionally, populations from Africa, the Eastern
Mediterranean and Southeast Asia are most at risk of
the common inherited diseases thalassemia, sickle cell
and the metabolic disease G6PD, regions less likely to
offer genetic testing that reveal at-risk couples.

The report takes no stand on abortion. But it also
found that Down syndrome is roughly twice as common in
poorer countries, which typically lack prenatal
testing, while half of affected pregnancies in Western
Europe are terminated following prenatal diagnosis.

Every mother-to-be has about a 5 percent chance of
having a baby with a serious birth defect, the
so-called "background rate," explained Dr. Arnold
Christianson of South Africa's University of
Witwatersrand, who co-wrote the report.

That risk can rise or fall, depending on a host of
circumstances: Does she take folic acid, a nutritional
supplement that fights neural tube defects? Is she
vaccinated against rubella? Does she have uncontrolled
diabetes or other pregnancy-harming illnesses? Is she
well-nourished? Are her pregnancies spaced far enough
apart?

"If mom can be as fit and well as possible at the time
of conception, it reduces the risk of a birth defect,"
Christianson said.

Among the report's recommendations:

_Improved health care for all women, with special
emphasis on pregnancy nutrition.

_Improved family planning and birth-defect education.
In Johannesburg, surveys show less than 40 percent of
African women know what Down syndrome is, much less
that their risk rises with pregnancies after age 35,
Christianson said.

_Proper care of affected babies. In South America, for
example, 55 percent of babies with Down syndrome die
before their first birthday. Median U.S. survival is
age 51, up from age 3 in the 1960s thanks to improved
care.

"Care is an absolute," Howson said. "Prevention is the
ideal."

And prevention can be cheap: Fortifying grain with
folic acid costs about a penny per year per person,
Cordero said.

In 2000, Chile added enough folic acid to wheat flour
to cause a 40 percent reduction in neural tube
defects. The U.S., with lower fortification levels,
saw a one-third drop.

Even gene tests can be relatively inexpensive. The
report cites Iran which, faced with skyrocketing costs
for thalassemia care, in 1997 began giving couples a
$5 gene test prior to marriage. Some separate if both
carry the disease-causing gene, but they also can opt
for fetal testing if they choose to conceive. By 2001,
more than 2.7 million prospective couples had been
screened, 10,298 at-risk couples identified and
counseled _ and thalassemia births had fallen to 30
percent of the expected rate.

© 2006 The Associated Press

--- ROY HERREN <royherren2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It would seem that in order to establish a casual
> effect of birth defects from exposure to radioactive
> material or radiation when studying the population
> at large that one would first have to know the
> baseline values from various other causes of birth
> defects.  The following article may help to
> establish that base line.
>    
>   Report Reveals 6% of Babies Born with Genetic
> Birth Defect
>  
> http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-01-30-voa60.cfm
> 
> 
> Roy Herren

+++++++++++++++++++
"Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an email."  - Eliot Spitzer, New York state attorney general

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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