New study on the relationship between oral clefts and fetal loss

Abstract
The sibships of 741 non‐syndromic individuals with cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL ± P), those of 115 subjects with isolated cleft palate (CP), plus 2 series of controls of the same size were studied in a variety of ways. The 2 most significant findings were (a) a higher fetal loss in the sibships of probands of the most frequently affected sex (CL ± P: male; CP: female) and (b) increased fetal mortality in the sibships with sporadic cases of CL ± P when compared to that found in sibships with more than one affected. In general the result do not support the hypothesis of a causal relationship between fetal death and non‐syndromic CL ± P or CP.