Most babies with birth defects are born to two parents with no obvious health problems or risk factors. A woman can do everything her doctor recommends to deliver a healthy child and still have a baby with a birth defect because over 60% of birth defects have no known causes. The other 40% are caused by genetics and environmental factors.
Environmental causes of birth defects have more to do with the mother's health and her exposure to chemicals or diseases. When a mother has certain infections or ingests certain substances it can cause birth defects.
Genetics are also a major influence of birth defects. The number or structure of chromosomes the baby is given will effect if it has a defect. Boys are more likely to gain genetic birth defects because they have only the one X chromosome they receive from their mothers (females have two X chromosomes — one from each parent), a faulty gene on the X chromosome they receive will cause problems because they don't have another X chromosome that females have to correct it.
5 comments:
Wow! How scary to think that when I have a child there is a 60% chance that it could have a birth defect from an unknown cause. The scariest part of that to me is that it is unknown so basically I can do nothing to prevent it. I think that as health educators we need to inform women of things they should avoid so we can prevent as many birth defects as possible.
That picture of the baby makes me cringe and makes me so sad! Painful!! That's enough for me to want to stay clear of birth defects!
I'm in Dr. Cole's environmental health class right now, and wow, it really is true about environmental effects on children throught heir mothers. Apparently every single woman in the world has contaminated breast milk, from the toxins in the environment. yikes, right?
I'm curious what the rates are in regards to 40% envrionmental causes--how many typically are related to alcohol, etc. And are the rates higher in our country vs others???
Ouch, that picture just makes me cry! You'd think with how much technology we've got...going around this world today that we'd find out what causes these 60% of birth defects! Only time will tell I guess!
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