Tag: Defects

Severe asthma attacks in pregnancy make babies more likely to have birth defects, study warns Researchers in Canada studied data covering more than 100,000 births They found the risk of the deadly complication pre-eclampsia rose by 30% Pregnant women may stop medicating asthma out of fear it will harm their baby But experts said the

New research led by scientists at The Rockefeller University in New York may help explain why Zika virus infection causes birth defects in some children but not others. The study, which will be published August 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that the risk of developing an abnormally small head (microcephaly) depends on

In experiments with pregnant mice infected with the Zika virus, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report they have successfully used a long-standing immunosuppressive drug to diminish the rate of fetal deaths and birth defects in the mice’s offspring. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved medicine, anakinra, once commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune

In a study published today in Science, UT Southwestern and Rockefeller University researchers used advanced microscopes to determine at atomic resolution the structure of a molecular complex implicated in birth defects and several cancers. The Hedgehog signaling pathway, which transmits information to embryonic cells, is crucial to human health. Insufficient signaling during development leads to

More than 60 years after the drug thalidomide caused birth defects in thousands of children whose mothers took the drug while pregnant, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have solved a mystery that has lingered ever since the dangers of the drug first became apparent: how did the drug produce such severe fetal harm? The answer,

DNA is the warehouse of genetic information in each living cell, and its integrity and stability are essential to life. This stability and integrity is maintained by DNA damage repair machinery. In a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a research team at Baylor College of Medicine found that defects in selective DNA damage repair