Common diseases, drugs, top reasons for birth defects at LUTH —Study

Illnesses such as malaria, typhoid, hypertension, and gestational diabetes or their drug treatment during pregnancy account for most birth defects in babies at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi-Araba, a study has said.

Researchers said that common illnesses like malaria (34.8 per cent ), typhoid (6.9 per cent), hypertension (56.5 per cent), pregestational diabetes (17.4 per cent) and HIV (13.0 per cent ) were implicated in birth defects over a 10-year period at the hospital.

The study said most of the documented birth abnormalities were Down’s Syndrome (15.2 per cent); congenital hydrocephalus  (14.3 per cent); acyanotic congenital heart defect  (13.4 per cent); deformity of the digits  (11.6 per cent ), and ventricular septal defect  (8.9 per cent).

The researchers had reviewed 180 medical records with a diagnosis of congenital anomalies, consisting of 92 female babies and 86 male babies from January 2006 to December 2016.

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The 2019 study, published in the Pharmacology Research & Perspectives involved Ifeanyichukwu Offor, Olufunsho Awodele and Kazeem A. Oshikoya.

Amongst these, 10  were delivered in LUTH while majority 159 of the cases were referred from other centres including private hospitals, general hospitals, health centres, amongst others. The average age of the fathers was 38.2 years and mothers were 31.8 years.

Relevant information such as antenatal and obstetric histories, types of birth abnormality, a medical condition in pregnancy, acute illness in pregnancy, sellf-medication, or prescription drugs use during pregnancy were extracted from the medical records.

According to the study, the majority 113 of the cases of birth abnormalities were diagnosed postpartum while 61 were diagnosed during postnatal follow-up.

Although the research could not fully establish a causal relationship between drugs use and environmental exposures during pregnancy with the birth abnormalities, they, however, stated that the occurrence of common diseases calls for concern as these may be connected with birth defects.

They declared, “We, therefore, recommend that the aforementioned disease conditions and their drug treatment during pregnancy be further investigated in future case control studies to fully understand their involvement in the development of birth abnormalities.”

According to the US Center for Disease Control, major birth defects occur in one of every 33 births and an estimated 7.9 million babies were affected worldwide in 2006.

About 50 to 60 per cent of all newborn birth defect has no specific cause, while others are associated with known causes or risk factors.

The known causes include fever, pregestational diabetes, syphilis and rubella infection, amongst others.

Factors such as twining, genetic abnormalities, deficiencies in iodine and folic acid and family history of birth defect have also been implicated in various birth malformations.