Serious Birth Defect Gastroschisis Is on the Rise in US, Reprots CDC

According to Dr. Greenberg, in gastroschisis, the intestines of the baby hang our from the baby’s body through an opening in the abdominal wall near the bellybutton.

Gastroschisis is a rare birth defect in which a newborn’s intestines protrude from a hole near his or her umbilical cord.

The latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the number of cases of the birth defect almost doubled from 1995 to 2005. “But anecdotally, over the years, most neonatologists would agree we’ve seen a steady persistent increase in the number of babies we see each year with gastroschisis”.

An infant born with gastroschisis requires medical surgery to return its abdominal organs to its proper places. Others might have trouble absorbing nutrients. The CDC released a report assessing the growth in incidences of gastroschisis from 2006 to 2012 among live births in 14 states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, and Utah.

“It concerns us that we don’t know why more babies are being born with this serious birth defect”, said Coleen Boyle, the director for the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disorders.

Overall, about 2,000 US babies are born each year with gastroschisis.

However, during the period taken into consideration for study, gastroschisis increased most significantly in babies born to non-Hispanic black mothers with age 20 or below, rising 263%. Experts are baffled by the cause of the sharp increase in the rate of gastroschisis from 2006 to 2012, especially in mothers under 20 who are either white or Hispanic. Babies might not get to leave the hospital for over six weeks, and the expense of the surgeries and the baby being in neonatal intensive units can be quite expensive. Mothers who consumed alcohol or used tobacco during pregnancy are at greater risk of having a baby with gastroschisis, as are women who had a sexually transmitted disease during pregnancy or who were underweight before pregnancy. But, the major risk includes linked with the exposure of the intestines to the amniotic fluid inside a mother’s uterus causes irritation of other affected organs making them twist, swell, shorten and infected. In some cases, the condition can be life-threatening, Gilboa said.