Neural Tube Defect Cause

Again a new study, as I have been noting over the years, reveals nutrition is a critical key to healthy offspring...

Corn mold may have fed NTD outbreak
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives 2006; 114: 237-41

Investigating whether maternal exposure to fumonisin, a mycotoxin that often contaminates corn, increases the risk of neural tube defects in offspring.

Tortillas made from corn containing a toxic mold may have caused the high prevalence of neural tube defects (NTDs) seen on the Mexican-American border in the early 1990s, research suggests.

Scientists have for decades been trying to determine why the incidence of NTDs among Mexican-American women doubled in 1990-1991. No chemical links to the affected infants have been confirmed. But the researchers note that the period began the same crop year as an outbreak in corn mold and that Mexican Americans in Texas consume a lot of corn, largely in the form of tortillas.

To investigate whether a toxin produced by corn mold, fumonisin, may have been responsible for the outbreak, Stacey Missmer (Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and colleagues conducted a population-based case-control study.

They found that, after adjusting for confounding factors, a moderate (301-400) compared with a low (100 or less) intake of tortillas during the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with an increased likelihood of having a NTD-affected pregnancy (odds ratio = 2.4). No increased risks were observed, however, with higher intakes.

"Our findings suggest that fumonisin exposure increases the risk of NTD, proportionate to dose, up to a threshold level, at which point fetal death may be more likely," the researchers conclude.

Posted: 16 February 2006