Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) has many forms and a wide range of causes. Clinically, it is important to understand the causes. This allows estimation of recurrence rate, guides treatment options, and may also be used to formulate public health advice to reduce the population prevalence of CHD. The recent advent of sophisticated genetic and genomic methods has led to the identification of more than 100 genes associated with CHD. However, despite these great strides, to date only one-third of CHD cases have been shown to have a simple genetic cause. This is because CHD can also be caused by oligogenic factors, environmental factors, and/or gene-environment interaction. Although solid evidence for environmental causes of CHD have been available for almost 80 years, it is only very recently that the molecular mechanisms for these risk factors have begun to be investigated. In this review, we describe the most important environmental CHD risk factors, and what is known about how they cause CHD.

Original publication

DOI

10.1101/cshperspect.a037234

Type

Journal article

Journal

Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol

Publication Date

02/03/2020

Volume

12

Keywords

Alcohol Drinking, Animals, Diabetes Mellitus, Environmental Exposure, Gene-Environment Interaction, Genomics, Heart, Heart Defects, Congenital, Humans, Hyperthermia, Hypoxia, Obesity, Phenylketonurias, Prevalence, Risk Factors, Thalidomide, Tretinoin, Vitamin A