Summer 2003 - Arkansas Children's Hospital

RESEARCH
CDC Awards Grant to Charlotte A. Hobbs, M.D., Ph.D.
and the ACH/UAMS Center for Birth Defects Research
$4.5 Million
Grant Awarded
Dr. Charlotte Hobbs is director of the Arkansas Center
for Birth Defects Research and Prevention, one of
seven such centers in the country.
Birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality in
the United States. Nationwide, three to five percent of all live
births are affected with birth defects. Each year, there are
approximately 37,000 live births in Arkansas and 1,500
infants born with birth defects.
The Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research and
Prevention, established in 1997 with funding from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is affiliated
with Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Arkansas Children’s
Hospital Research Institute, UAMS and the Arkansas
Department of Health. Charlotte A. Hobbs, M.D., Ph.D., an
associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UAMS,
is the Center’s director.
The Center recently received a five-year, $4.5 million
research grant from CDC. This grant was awarded through a
competitive renewal for CDC-funded Centers for Birth
Defects Research. For the next five years, the Arkansas
Center and six other centers will receive approximately
$900,000 annually from the CDC to continue research on the
causes and prevention of birth defects. The other six funded
centers are located in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, North
Carolina, Texas and Utah.
With this funding, the Center will continue to participate
in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. The purpose
of the study is to discover environmental and genetic factors
that might increase understanding of the causes of birth
defects with the goal of preventing many birth defects in the
future. Each year, the Center researchers will conduct interviews
with 300 mothers of Arkansas children born with birth
defects and 100 mothers of children without birth defects. All
the Centers for Birth Defects Research and Prevention will
conduct similar interviews. To date, the Center has interviewed
1,283 mothers of Arkansas children born with birth
defects and 423 mothers of children born without birth
defects.
The CDC funding has allowed the Center to compete
successfully for additional funding from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the March of Dimes.
In 2000, the Arkansas Center was awarded a five-year grant
totaling $3.7 million from the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development titled “Genes,
Micronutrients, and Homeobox-related Malformations.” This
study focuses on the roles of diet and genetic factors and
the association between diet- and folate-dependent metabolic
pathways and the risk of having a pregnancy affected by
congenital heart defects or neural tube defects such as spina
bifida.
Other research activities and educational interventions at
the center include:
• Establishment of a laboratory for genetic studies of
birth defects, with a special emphasis on the
development of limb reduction defects.
• Work to unravel the complex relationship between
maternal nutrient intake and environmental exposures,
genetic risks, and the occurrence of neural tube defects
such as spina bifida, heart defects and Down syndrome.
• Development of new approaches to understanding
the role of diabetes in birth defects. The risk of having
a baby with a birth defect is three to five times greater
for women with diabetes than for women without diabetes.
• Investigation of the healthcare utilization and medical
costs for children with birth defects.
• Intensive intervention efforts targeted at Arkansas
women who have had pregnancies affected by a neural
tube defect with the goal of preventing a subsequent
pregnancy affected by a neural tube defect.
The Center continues to evolve as a collaborative organization
pursuing its mission of surveillance, research and
public health programs designed to lessen the burden of
birth defects in the state and the nation.
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