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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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