For my Medical Terminology class, I had to choose a topic that surrounded our main lecture of chapter nine, neonatology disease and disorders. My disease that I have chosen is Cleft Palate or Palate. A Cleft Palate is when there is a split or an opening in the roof of the mouth. It can involve the hard palate which is the bony front portion of the roof of the mouth, or the soft palate which is the soft back portion of the roof of the mouth. There is also a Cleft Lip which is where there is a physical split or separation of the two sides of the upper lip and it would appear as a narrow opening or a gap in the skin of the upper lip and this separation could extend beyond the base of the nose, which includes the bones of the upper jaw or upper
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In the second or third month of pregnancy, a baby's mouth a lip would normally start to come together and fuse into one, but with babies that have this disease, it wouldn’t occur or just not completely form all the way. Some researchers have believed that the most common causes of palates are genetic and environmental factors. It means that when a mother or father carries the gene and it gets passed onto the baby, an environmental trigger could make the cleft then happen. Some risk factors that have been stated to increase the chances of this disease is smoking during pregnancy, being diagnosed with diabetes while being pregnant, the use of certain medications like topiramate or valproic acid, family history, race (most common in Native-Americans), sex (males mostly), and also being obese. I have found a quote that a researcher possibly has a key to where the gene comes from, "Finding this birth defect in every single child in a family is like catching lightning in a bottle because it allowed us to pinpoint the gene mutation that is probably responsible," said Yang Chai, senior author of the study and director of the Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC. "Our finding that the gene IFT88 is involved in cleft lip and palate is unlikely to be mere coincidence." ( Chai
In the second or third month of pregnancy, a baby's mouth a lip would normally start to come together and fuse into one, but with babies that have this disease, it wouldn’t occur or just not completely form all the way. Some researchers have believed that the most common causes of palates are genetic and environmental factors. It means that when a mother or father carries the gene and it gets passed onto the baby, an environmental trigger could make the cleft then happen. Some risk factors that have been stated to increase the chances of this disease is smoking during pregnancy, being diagnosed with diabetes while being pregnant, the use of certain medications like topiramate or valproic acid, family history, race (most common in Native-Americans), sex (males mostly), and also being obese. I have found a quote that a researcher possibly has a key to where the gene comes from, "Finding this birth defect in every single child in a family is like catching lightning in a bottle because it allowed us to pinpoint the gene mutation that is probably responsible," said Yang Chai, senior author of the study and director of the Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC. "Our finding that the gene IFT88 is involved in cleft lip and palate is unlikely to be mere coincidence." ( Chai