The Remera association publishes a new study to demonstrate that there is indeed a “cluster” of babies born with an arm malformation in the Ain, between 2009 and 2014, within a radius of a few kilometers around the town of Dompierre -on-Veyle.
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The association T-shirt, the oldest of the six French registers of congenital malformations and whistleblower on several cases of babies with malformed arms in the Ain, says in a study that this phenomenon is not “linked to chance”, whereas the authorities do not recognize for the moment any statistical anomaly for this territory.
Published on February 9 in the American journal “Birth Defects Research” under the title “Evidence of a cluster of a rare malformation in France”, the study “shows that there is indeed a spatio-temporal aggregate in this department, made up of eight children born with this very rare malformation (editor’s note: transverse agenesis), in a very precise time scale between 2009 and 2014 and in a circle of 16 km radius“around the town of Dompierre-sur-Veyle, the general director of Remera (Register of malformations in Rhône-Alpes), Emmanuelle Amar, told AFP on Wednesday, confirming information from BFM Lyon.
“We know that the origin of these cases is not mechanical, genetic, medicinal and occurs in a small very humid and very agricultural area. She is exogenous“, added the epidemiologist, co-author of the study with a geneticist, a retired professor of biostatistics from the CHU de Lyon and a biostatistician.
“Chance is certainly not for nothing in this grouping of cases of malformations (…) Is it due to a phytosanitary product, cleaning, a painting … these hypotheses must be investigated but it is not is not our role“, she continued, stressing that it was up to the authorities to do so”by setting up committees of independent experts“. For now, the research center, which is backed by the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), is awaiting an expert report from Public Health France (SPF) on cases of agenesis in France including “clusters”, according to Remera, would also be observed “in Morbihan and Loire-Atlantique“.
The so-called case of babies with malformed arms had been made public in the fall of 2018 thanks to Ms. Amar, who then challenged the conclusions of an SPF report on the phenomenon. On its website, the latter indicated in particular on the cases of Ain, that “the statistical analysis does not reveal an excess of cases compared to the national average” and that “the absence of hypothesis of a possible common cause did not make it possible to orient further investigations “. The suspension of funding for Remera by Inserm (30,000 euros per year) and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region (100,000 euros per year) followed this media release, according to Ms. Amar.
Each year, 150 cases of transverse angesia are recorded in France, i.e. 1.7 cases per 10,000 births, according to Public Health France. (AFP)
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