$5.6 Million Grant Awarded to Discover Causes of Congenital Heart Defects

Researchers from the Texas A&M University System Health Science Center’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and the California Birth Defects Monitoring Project have won a $5.6 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health to discover causes of congenital heart defects.

Dr. Richard H. Finnell, director of IBT, serves as the co-director of the federal grant awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, one of the institutes that comprise the NIH, located in Bethesda, Md. The grant runs for five years and is a program project grant, which is significant since these typically are much larger than those awarded to individual scientists. Program project grants are very competitive and bring together groups of researchers using different methods to study one specific hypothesis.

"Our three research teams will investigate the various ways that selected genes interact with specific drugs, environmental exposures and vitamin deficiencies to cause abnormal heart development," says Dr. Finnell. "Right now we are simply unable to predict when birth defects will occur, based upon either genetic makeup or environmental exposures. But at the end of our five-year project, we hope to be in a position to bring a whole new light on the causes of these significant heart defects, and this, in turn, will significantly increase our ability to prevent them. I would not at all be surprised to find that many of these birth defects have a basic common cause."

The American Heart Association reports that congenital heart defects are the most common of all human birth defects and are the leading cause of death from birth defects during the first year of life. Out of 1,000 births, eight babies will have some form of congenital heart disorder. About 35,000 babies are born with a defect each year. Medical expenses for the care of these children exceed $2.2 billion annually for inpatient surgery alone.

Dr. Finnell’s team will study mice that have undergone genetic engineering to change their susceptibility to congenital defects. The second research team, located in Nebraska under the direction of Dr. Thomas H. Rosenquist, director of the research program and vice-chancellor for research at UNMC, will use chicken embryos as experimental models. The third team in California will study congenital heart defects in human babies and the relationship those defects may have to the genetics and prenatal behavior of their mothers.

"For several years the evidence has been accumulating that a moderate intake of folic acid in the periconceptional period decreases the risk of birth defects," says Dr. Finnell. "We will now look at how folic acid helps prevent heart defects and how a vitamin deficiency may interact with drugs like alcohol or certain cough medicines to increase the risk of having a baby born with a heart defect."

This research team’s program project grant is the largest study ever undertaken to determine the relationship among heart defects, drugs, environmental exposures and vitamin deficiencies in human babies.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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