More Cleft Information

quoting from http://www.cleftline.org/

HOW MANY BABIES ARE BORN WITH CLEFTS?
* Clefts are among the most common problems found in newborn babies.
Annually in the US, over 6,800 newborns (or about one in 600 babies) are born with a cleft.

Causes and Frequency of Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate

No Single cause of cleft lip, cleft palate, or both has been identified.
We do know that the majority of clefts appear to be due to a combination of inherited factors (genes) interacting with certain "environmental" factors. Clefting occurs very early in pregnancy and represents a problem over which a pregnant woman probably has no control.

Clefts of the lip and palate are among the most common of all birth defects.
While isolated cleft palate seems to occur in all racial groups equally, cleft lip with or without cleft palate is most common in Asians. It is less commmon in whites, and least common in blacks. Approximately one out of every 700 to 750 infants born alive in the United States has a cleft lip and/or palate.

"Environmental" factors that have been convincingly documented to increase the risk for clefting when used during pregnancy include: heavy alcohol consumption, smoking, and certain prescription medications for acne and epilepsy. There is little firm evidence that commonly used Over the counter medications, trauma, or illness during pregnancy plays a significant role.

The lip is formed at 7 weeks of pregnancy (counting from the last menstrual cycle) and the palate at 11 weeks using the same dating. A woman may not even know that she is pregnant at this point. To cause a cleft lip/palate, the environmental exposure must have occured before the formation of these structures. Anything that happened after this time has no bearing on the cause of the cleft.