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Birth Defects Home > Research > Centers for Birth Defects Research > Oral Clefts
Research Highlight: Mother’s Smoking and Oral Clefts
From the California Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention

Researchers at the California Center studied how genes can interact with a mother’s smoking to cause oral clefts.
  • Oral clefts are birth defects that occur in the lip, the roof of the mouth (hard palate), or the soft tissue in the back of the mouth (soft palate).
  • This study looked at a gene—called TGF-alpha—that helps in the forming of the palate and mouth. The TGF-alpha gene has several forms.
  • The study found that women who smoked during pregnancy were almost twice as likely to have babies with oral clefts. The more the mother smoked, the higher the risk.
  • The hazard of a mother’s smoking was even greater for the 1 in 7 babies with the A2 form of the TGF-alpha gene. Babies with this form of the gene were 8 times more likely to have oral clefts if their mothers smoked. Babies born to nonsmoking mothers did not have a higher risk.
  • Nonsmoking mothers who had been around secondhand smoke had a very small, if any, increased risk of having a baby with an oral cleft. A father’s smoking increased the risk of oral clefts only if the mother smoked too.

Source: California Birth Defects Monitoring Program. Smoking and Oral Clefts. 1999. [cited 2007 Oct 16]. Available from: http://www.cbdmp.org/pdf/smokingoralclefts.pdf 


[Back to California Center information]

Date: January 03, 2008
Content source: National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities

 

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