Abstract With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic showing no signs of abating, resuming neglected tropical (NTD) activities, particularly mass drug administration (MDA), is vital. Failure to resume activities will not only enhance risk NTD transmission, but fail leverage behaviour change messaging on importance hand and face washing improved sanitation—a common strategy for several...

OBJECTIVE Women who have low cobalamin (vitamin B(12)) levels are at increased risk for having children with neural tube defects (NTDs). The transcobalamin II receptor (TCblR) mediates uptake of cobalamin into cells. Inherited variants in the TCblR gene as NTD risk factors were evaluated. METHODS Case-control and family-based tests of association were used to screen common variation in TCblR ...

BACKGROUND Folic acid supplementation prevents the occurrence and recurrence of neural tube defects (NTDs), but the causal metabolic pathways underlying folic acid-responsive NTDs have not been established. Serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT1) partitions folate-derived one-carbon units to thymidylate biosynthesis at the expense of cellular methylation, and therefore SHMT1-deficient mice are ...

From studies in the mouse and from the clinical and molecular analysis of patients with type 1 Waardenburg syndrome, particular members of the PAX gene family are suspected factors in the aetiology of human neural tube defects (NTD). To investigate the role of PAX1, PAX3, PAX7, and PAX9, allelic association studies were performed in 79 sporadic and 38 familial NTD patients from the Dutch popula...

BACKGROUND Open neural tube defects are among the most common severely disabling birth defects. Secondary prevention by early diagnosis during pregnancy and abortion of affected fetuses lead to a marked reduction of NTD incidence at birth. For primary prevention of these defects, in August 2000 the Israel Ministry of Health issued guidelines recommending a daily 0.4 mg folic acid supplement for...

To conduct a number of studies into the prevalence of neural tube defects (NTD) in the area covered by the Oxford Record Linkage Study (ORLS), multiple sources were used to build a local register of cases occurring in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire between 1968-1990. One source of potential cases--namely, termination and congenital malformation monitoring data available for the locality from th...

Despite the clinical impact of non-motor symptoms (NMS) in Parkinson's disease (PD), the characteristic NMS in relation to the motor subtypes of PD is not well elucidated. In this study, we enrolled drug-naïve PD patients and compared NMS between PD subtypes. We enrolled 136 drug-naïve, early PD patients and 50 normal controls. All the enrolled PD patients were divided into tremor dominant (TD)...

BACKGROUND Previous studies suggested an excess of matrilineal cases of neural tube defects among distant relatives in NTD families. There is little information on patterns of heredity of other birth defects among distant relatives. METHODS Between 1995 and 2003, 78 nuclear families and 373 uncles and aunts were interviewed about birth defects among uncles and aunts in Irish families with an ...

AIM To study the association between the expression of H3K27me3 and ACat2 (a folate metabolic protein), in order to elucidate the protective mechanism of folic acid (FA) in neural tube defects (NTDs). METHODS Eighteen female SD rats were randomly divided into normal, NTD and FA group. NTD group was induced by all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) at E10d. FA group was fed with FA supplementation sin...

UNLABELLED As pharmacists and pharmacy students are increasingly called upon to assume roles in public health activities, it is important to recognize unique opportunities to educate community members on health, wellness, and disease prevention. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of a pilot health promotion program on college women's knowledge regarding folic acid and prevention of neural tube ...