Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Nov 16:10:115.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2377-10-115.

Congenital abnormalities and multiple sclerosis

Sreeram V Ramagopalan  1 , Colleen Guimond, Maria Criscuoli, David A Dyment, Sarah-Michelle Orton, Irene M Yee, George C Ebers, Dessa Sadovnick
Affiliations

Congenital abnormalities and multiple sclerosis

Sreeram V Ramagopalan et al. BMC Neurol. .

Abstract

Background: There is a strong maternal parent-of-origin effect in determining susceptibility to multiple sclerosis (MS). One hypothesis is that an abnormal intrauterine milieu leading to impaired fetal development could plausibly also result in increased susceptibility to MS. A possible marker for this intrauterine insult is the presence of a non-fatal congenital anomaly.

Methods: We investigated whether or not congenital anomalies are associated with MS in a population-based cohort. We identified 7063 MS index cases and 2655 spousal controls with congenital anomaly information from the Canadian Collaborative Project on Genetic Susceptibility to MS (CCPGSMS).

Results: The frequency of congenital anomalies were compared between index cases and controls. No significant differences were found.

Conclusions: Congenital anomalies thus do not appear to be associated with MS. However, we did not have complete data on types and severity of congenital anomalies or on maternal birth history and thus this study should be regarded as preliminary.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Noseworthy JH, Lucchinetti C, Rodriguez M, Weinshenker BG. Multiple sclerosis. N Engl J Med. 2000;343(13):938–952. doi: 10.1056/NEJM200009283431307. - DOI - PubMed
    1. McFarland HF, Martin R. Multiple sclerosis: a complicated picture of autoimmunity. Nat Immunol. 2007;8(9):913–919. doi: 10.1038/ni1507. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hoppenbrouwers IA, Liu F, Aulchenko YS, Ebers GC, Oostra BA, van Duijn CM, Hintzen RQ. Maternal transmission of multiple sclerosis in a dutch population. Arch Neurol. 2008;65(3):345–348. doi: 10.1001/archneurol.2007.63. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ebers GC, Sadovnick AD, Dyment DA, Yee IM, Willer CJ, Risch N. Parent-of-origin effect in multiple sclerosis: observations in half-siblings. Lancet. 2004;363(9423):1773–1774. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)16304-6. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ramagopalan SV, Dyment DA, Ebers GC. Genetic epidemiology: the use of old and new tools for multiple sclerosis. Trends Neurosci. 2008;31(12):645–652. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2008.09.001. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types