Not enough American women understand that consuming the B vitamin folic acid every day can help prevent serious birth defects, and only 40 percent are taking daily multivitamin supplements containing this essential nutrient beginning before pregnancy, two recent surveys show.

A group of signaling proteins known as Wnt - which help build the human body’s skin, bone, muscle and other tissues - depend on a complex delivery and recycling system to ensure their transport to tissue-building cell sites, according to a study at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

More than a third of women surveyed about their beliefs surrounding miscarriage and birth defects said they thought that a pregnant woman's foul mood could negatively affect her baby.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the former East Germany conducted a state-sanctioned program administering anabolic steroids to its athletes. Now the horrific consequences of the doping program are beginning to emerge.

Heavy pollution in coal mining regions of China led to sad results –there are soaring levels of defects in newborn babies. Results from eight main coal mining areas in Shanxi province show levels far higher than the national average, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried by the Beijing News.

Scientists in California are reporting an advance toward rapid testing for pre-natal detection of Down syndrome and other birth defects that involve an abnormal number of chromosomes.

Although prescription medications that may increase the risk of birth defects are commonly used by women in their childbearing years, only about half receive contraceptive counseling from their health care providers, according to a large-scale study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine reported in the Sept. 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Babies born to women who are obese before becoming pregnant have a higher risk of birth defects, a new study has found. Scientists at the University of Texas in the United States have found that birth defects such as missing limbs and malformed hearts are more common in babies whose mothers are obese.

Mothers of babies born with some structural birth defects—including missing limbs, malformed hearts and underdeveloped spinal cords—appear more likely to be obese prior to becoming pregnant than mothers whose children are born without such defects, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Two research studies published today in The New England Journal of Medicine found taking SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), anti-depression drugs, during pregnancy did not significantly increase the overall risk for most birth defects. However, each study found that taking SSRIs during pregnancy was associated with a small increase in the risk of certain rare birth defects – but they were different birth defects.

Researchers from Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center have found that certain selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors antidepressants do not appear to increase the risk for most kinds of birth defects. The findings, to be published in the June 28, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that individual SSRIs may increase the risk for some specific defects, but these are rare and the absolute risks are small.