Doctors worry about big rise in bizarre birth defect, with intestines outside the body

Physicians in the US are seeing more instances of a birth defect in which infants are born with their intestines outside their body.

The increase has been driven by a sharp rise in the bizarre and potentially fatal defect among babies born to young African-American mothers, says a new report by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Over the 18 years leading up to 2012, the CDC has documented a 263 per cent increase in the birth defect among children born to young black mothers, said a report released Thursday by the agency.

Coleen Boyle, director of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, said it was urgent that researchers find the cause of the defect and determine which women are at greater risk for having babies with the affliction.

In gastroschisis, the intestines, and sometime other visceral organs such as the liver and stomach, protrude through a hole next to a newborn’s belly button.

Though the abnormality can be life-threatening, it can often be fixed soon after birth with surgery to return the organs inside the abdomen and repair the abdominal wall. But because the affected organs are irritated by their exposure to amniotic fluid inside a mother’s uterus, they can twist, swell, shorten and become infected.