Team gets $5 million to study birth defects

Every day in Utah, an average of three babies are born with a birth defect. The state has the highest rate of oral-facial clefts in the nation. A new, $5 million infusion of federal funds should help the University of Utah and Utah Department of Health learn why.

The grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give the team about $1 million a year for the next five years. The state was first funded for birth defects research in 2002.

"Since then, we've uncovered a critical link between abdominal wall birth defects and first-trimester infections in the mother," said Dr. Marcia Feldkamp, director of the Utah Birth Defects Network and assistant professor of pediatrics at the U. School of Medicine. Feldkamp is the primary investigator on the grant. Dr. Lorenzo D. Botto, assistant professor of pediatric genetics, is a co-investigator whose research interest is in congenital heart defects.

The researchers are trying to uncover how genetics and the environment work together to produce birth defects. The grant will help the researchers expand Utah's epidemiological and genetic birth defect databases and studies on environmental and genetic factors. They will use the Utah Birth Defect Network, the state's population-based surveillance program, to find at least 300 babies with birth defects and 100 without birth defects each of the next five years. They also will collect DNA from babies and parents to look at genetic susceptibility and interview the mothers to study certain environmental exposures.

For more information about the Utah Birth Defect Network, visit www.health.utah.gov/birthdefect.