Brender, Jean D.Scaife, Barbara D.2022-10-312022-10-312000-08Scaife, B. D. (2000). Iron and its relationship to neural tube defects among offspring of Texas border county women (Unpublished thesis). Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.https://hdl.handle.net/10877/16255Neural tube defects (NTDs) are major malformations of the developing central nervous system. The most common types are anencephaly and spina bifida. In 1992, a small case-control study in Cameron County, TX by the Texas Department of Health found hematocrit values among women giving birth to babies with anencephaly and any NTDs to be significantly lower (p< 0.01) than among control-women. Those results led to a much larger case-control study designed to ascertain risk factors for NTDs. This study explored whether an association existed between iron and NTDs in 148 cases and 158 controls. Dietary iron intake, blood hemoglobin and hematocrit values, and serum ferritin values were analyzed to see whether case and control values differed. No associations were found between case-women and control-women for dietary iron intake, hemoglobin, or hematocrit. Associations were found between ferritin and NTDs among women with a BMI less than 21.3 and among women less than 24 years of age.Text83 pages1 file (.pdf)enneural tubeiron in the bodyborderswomenThesis