EVALUATION OF TERATOGENIC RISKS - CONTRIB UTION OF BIRTH-DEFECTS REGISTRIES

Birth defects registries have been established following the thalidomi de epidemic in the early sixties. A first objective of registries is t o monitor the frequency of specific malformations in order to detect a s early as possible any variation caused by the introduction of a new teratogen in the environment. After 30 years not any new teratogen has been identified by this. It appears that the predictive value of alar ms generated by surveillance is extremely low and that ressources are insufficient to investigate most of warnings. However, registries have been useful to test specific hypotheses i.e. the effect of iatrogenic exposures. Three examples are given, showing the necessary characteri stics of registries: topical treatment with tretinoin, chorionic biops y and cancer treatment.