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Rise in Brain Birth Defect in Washington State

posted by girlwhowaspluggedout on Monday March 03 2014, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the some-correlation-is-still-better-than-none dept.

GungnirSniper writes:

"In the US State of Washington, the rare birth defect anencephaly has become slightly more common, worrying would-be parents and baffling epidemiologists. TechTimes.com reports that the health records of a single three-county area in Washington State 'revealed 23 cases of anencephaly in 36 months, between January 2010 and 2013. This translates to a rate of 8.4 births out of every 10,000. That is four times the normal occurrence for the rare disorder.'

A group of epidemiologists working for the state's Department of Health reported finding no clear cause for the exceptional prevalence of this fatal birth defect. But they are now accused of not looking hard enough for the cause. Dr. Beate Ritz, who has done several studies on birth defects, told CNN that the data quality on medical records, which were the primary source of data used in the study, 'is so low that it's not really research'.

Washington's Department of Health has admitted that 'Medical record reviews might not have captured all information, preventing a cause from being identified,' and says its officials will continue monitoring births, and look for possible causes.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by geb on Monday March 03 2014, @09:14AM

    by geb (529) on Monday March 03 2014, @09:14AM (#10018)

    A brief look through the articles seems to show a few relevant numbers, including average rate, the increased rate observed, and confidence interval (i.e. percentage chance that the figures reflect actual reality)

    There was a mention of statistical significance, but only to say the rise was not observed to be linked to any factor studied (smoking, alcohol, health of the mother, etc).

    What I did not see was any mention of the chance that this rise in rate would happen without any unusual influence, or statistical significance of the spike. Did I miss it?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @09:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @09:41AM (#10028)

    Some more numbers:

    1. Diabetes rate doubles in Washington State [king5.com] - along with Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.
    2. Washington 7.2% adults diagnosed with diabetes [cdc.gov] (page 5) - Google says in 2010 WA had a population of 6.744mils => 486,000 diabetics

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by BradleyAndersen on Monday March 03 2014, @10:02AM

    by BradleyAndersen (3383) on Monday March 03 2014, @10:02AM (#10034) Homepage
    a tell here is that the confidence interval for this 'study' is very wide compared to the national average confidence interval.