ARE BLASTOGENETIC ANOMALIES SPORADIC

Opitz [Birth Defects, 1993, 1:3-37] postulated that sporadic defects o f blastogenesis generally are highly lethal and have a low recurrence risk. We have observed that mothers of infants with blastogenetic defe cts have more previous abortions than mothers of children with nonblas togenetic defects or than mothers of control infants. Thus the high le thality of blastogenetic abnormalities may be responsible for the spon taneous abortions, and there may be a potential for an increased recur rence risk in some cases. Our results also show that the increased rat e of spontaneous abortions is not similar for all blastogenetic defect s, since it is not elevated in mothers of infants with neural tube def ects (NTD). Further, our analysis does not confirm the relationship be tween spontaneous abortions in the preceding pregnancy and the occurre nce of NTD previously reported by other authors. (C) 1991 Wiley-Liss, Inc.