They identified a pattern of "craniofacial, limb, and cardiovascular defects associated with prenatal onset growth deficiency and developmental delay" in eight unrelated children of three ethnic groups, all born to mothers who were alcoholics. The pattern of malformations indicated that the damage was prenatal. News of the discovery shocked some, while others were skeptical of the findings.Dr. Paul Lemoine of Nantes, France had already published a study in a French medical journal in 1968 about children with distinctive features whose mothers were alcoholics, and in the U.S., Christy Ulleland and colleagues at the University of Washington Medical School had conducted an 18-month study in 1968–1969 documenting the risk of maternal alcohol consumption among the offspring of 11 alcoholic mothers. The Washington and Nantes findings were confirmed by a research group in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1979. Researchers in France, Sweden, and the United States were struck by how similar these children looked, though they were not related, and how they behaved in the same unfocused and hyperactive manner.Within nine years of the Washington discovery, animal studies, including non-human monkey studies carried out at the University of Washington Primate Center by Dr. Sterling Clarren, had confirmed that alcohol was a teratogen. By 1978, 245 cases of FAS had been reported by medical researchers, and the syndrome began to be described as the most frequent known cause of intellectual disability.While many syndromes are eponymous, i.e. named after the physician first reporting the association of symptoms, Smith named FAS after the causal agent of the symptoms.
For particularly invasive infections, antibiotics to cover anaerobic bacteria may be added (such as metronidazole). Treatment is typically for two weeks and often necessitates insertion of a central venous catheter or peripherally inserted central catheter. Epidemiology
The current incidence in the United States is somewhere around 0.5% per year; overall, the incidence rate for developed world falls between 0.2 and 0.7%. In developing countries, the incidence of omphalitis varies from 2 to 7 for 100 live births. There does not appear to be any racial or ethnic predilection. Like many bacterial infections, omphalitis is more common in those patients who have a weakened or deficient immune system or who are hospitalized and subject to invasive procedures. Therefore, infants who are premature, sick with other infections such as blood infection (sepsis) or pneumonia, or who have immune deficiencies are at greater risk. Infants with normal immune systems are at risk if they have had a prolonged birth, birth complicated by infection of the placenta (chorioamnionitis), or have had umbilical catheters. References


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