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Child Care – How to preventing Child Birth Defects? | Child Birth Defects Prevention | Prevention Of Child Birth Defects

The National Birth Defects Prevention Network is a group of individuals involved in birth defects surveillance, research, and prevention. It was created to establish and maintain a national network of state and population-based programs for birth defects surveillance and research. The Network assesses the impact of birth defects upon children, families, and health care; identifies factors that can be used to develop primary prevention strategies and assists families and their providers in secondary disabilities prevention.

Although we do not know the cause of most birth defects, the good news is that we know how to prevent some birth defects. CDC is working to find out how to prevent others. Scientists study data gathered from our birth defects monitoring systems to learn more. Click on links below to see some of CDC’s activities to help prevent birth defects.For example, a daily supplement to the diet of 500 micrograms of folic acid, a B vitamin, has been shown to prevent up to 70 percent of cases of neural tube defects. Neural tube defects, which include anencephaly, spina bifida, and encephalocele, are serious and often lethal birth defects of the spine and central nervous system.

The recognition that many of these birth defects can be prevented with folic acid has led to initiatives at the state and national levels aimed at educating women about the importance of consuming the appropriate amount of this vitamin on a daily basis. In 1996 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a rule requiring that all enriched grain products sold in the United States be fortified with 140 micrograms of folic acid per 100 grams of product. As a result of these public health initiatives, the rate of spina bifida and anencephaly has declined substantially since the early 1990s.

The National Birth Defects Prevention Study was designed to identify infants with major birth defects and evaluate genetic and environmental factors associated with the occurrence of birth defects. The ongoing case control study covers an annual birth population of 482,000 and includes cases identified from birth defect surveillance registries in eight states. Infants used as controls are randomly selected from birth certificates or birth hospital records. Mothers of case and control infants are interviewed and parents are asked to collect buccal cells from themselves and their infants for DNA testing.

Information gathered from the interviews and the DNA specimens will be used to study independent genetic and environmental factors and gene environment interactions for a broad range of birth defects. As of December 2000, 7,470 cases and 3,821 controls had been ascertained in the eight states. Interviews had been completed with 70% of the eligible case and control mothers, buccal cell collection had begun in all of the study sites, and researchers were developing analysis plans for the compiled data.