Studies show that a woman who has had one child with a neural tube defect such as anencephaly has about a 3% risk of having another child with a neural tube defect, as opposed to the background rate of 0.1% occurrence in the population at large. Genetic counseling is usually offered to women at a higher risk of having a child with a neural tube defect to discuss available testing. It is known that people taking certain anticonvulsants and people with insulin-dependent diabetes have a higher risk of having a child with a neural tube defect. Relation to genetic ciliopathy
Until recently, medical literature did not indicate a connection among many genetic disorders, both genetic syndromes and genetic diseases, that are now being found to be related. As a result of new genetic research, some of these are, in fact, highly related in their root cause despite the widely varying set of medical symptoms that are clinically visible in the disorders. Anencephaly is one such disease, part of an emerging class of diseases called ciliopathies. The underlying cause may be a dysfunctional molecular mechanism in the primary cilia structures of the cell, organelles present in many cellular types throughout the human body. The cilia defects adversely affect "numerous critical developmental signaling pathways" essential to cellular development and, thus, offer a plausible hypothesis for the often multi-symptom nature of a large set of syndromes and diseases.
He wanted to find a similar compound that would have fewer side effects, and around 1977, at about the same time he moved from London to Haifa to join the faculty of Technion, he noticed that rasagiline could potentially be such a compound. He called that compound, AGN 1135.In 1996 Youdim, in collaboration with scientists from Technion and the US National Institutes of Health, and using compounds developed with Teva Pharmaceuticals, published a paper in which the authors wrote that they were inspired by the racemic nature of deprenyl and the greater activity of one of its stereoisomers, L-deprenyl, which became selegiline,  to explore the qualities of the isomers of the Aspro compound, and they found that the R-isomer had almost all the activity; this is the compound that became rasagiline. They called the mesylate salt of the R-isomer TVP-1012 and the hydrochloride salt, TVP-101.Teva and Technion filed patent applications for this racemically pure compound, methods to make it, and methods to use it to treat Parkinsons and other disorders, and Technion eventually assigned its rights to Teva.Teva began development of rasagiline, and by 1999 was in Phase III trials, and entered into a partnership with Lundbeck in which Lundbeck agreed to share the costs and obtained the joint right to market the drug in Europe.