Eleven additional suspect cases of children born with malformations were identified in the Ain. Public Health France and the National Health Security Agency are investigating the entire territory.

An investigation of all France is "in progress" in the case of babies born without hands, arms or forearms, announced Wednesday morning, on RTL , Dr. François Bourdillon, director general of the agency Public Health France.

The first conclusions of this national survey decided after the identification of eleven new cases of infants born without arms or without hands in the Ain will be made public on January 31, 2019, announced Wednesday Agnes Buzyn.

Results in two stages

This survey, which will explore in particular the environmental trail, will be conducted jointly by Public Health France and the National Agency for Health Security (ANSES). "The first part of the investigation, we will have January 31, and we asked for the entire survey before June," said the Minister of Health on BFM TV and RMC Info .

"The complexity is to go back in the history of these families on cases that sometimes date back more than ten years," she added.

Eleven additional suspected cases of children born without arms or forearms were identified in the Ain, announced Tuesday Public Health France. Babies born with a malformation of the upper limbs, between 2000 and 2014.

These eleven suspected cases are in addition to the seven cases reported by the Remera (Register of congenital malformations in Rhône-Alpes), according to Dr. François Bourdillon.

18 cases in fifteen years in Ain

The head of the Remera, Emmanuelle Amar, confirmed Tuesday the existence of an 8th case unveiled by the daily Le Monde , explaining that a "combination of circumstances very unfortunate" , namely a lack of computerized medical records in the maternity where was born the boy in 2012, explained that he escaped the register.

On the basis of hospital data (PMSI), in the department of Ain, the health agency spotted between 2000 and 2008, seven suspected cases and between 2009 and 2014, four additional suspected cases, a priori the case reported by Remera.

This brings the total to 18 cases over fifteen years. However, these suspect cases must be confirmed.

Many analyzes

In order to confirm this particular form of abnormality (total absence of the arm, forearm, hand and fingers), it is necessary to ensure that "it is isolated" and "is not associated with any another major malformation, nor to a chromosomal anomaly, nor a known in utero amniotic flange (a fibrous filament) that could have sectioned the limb, " says Dr. Bourdillon.

The analysis of the geographical distribution and over time, by year, over these fifteen years and further investigations are ongoing.

Cases in the West

In addition to these eighteen cases in the Ain, intance had reported in early October three infants born without hands, arms or forearms in Loire-Atlantique between 2007 and 2008, and four similar cases in the Morbihan between 2011 and 2013. Public Health France had then judged that the anomalies found in Loire-Atlantique and Brittany were in excess of the national average but had not concluded to suspicious occurrences in the Ain.

According to hospital records, the only birth monitoring system, these malformations have an incidence in France of 1.7 cases per 10,000 births, or about 150 cases per year. They may be due to several known causes: chromosomal abnormalities, teratogenic effect (which causes the development of abnormal cell masses) of certain drugs such as thalidomide, or mechanical origin during pregnancy.

Agnès Buzyn does not want to "close any track"

"I want to know, I think all of France wants to know," said Agnès Buzyn. You have to know where these women have carried out their pregnancy, if it was in the department, if it was elsewhere. "We do not want to close any trail: it's possibly an environmental trail, maybe that's what they ate, what they drank, what they breathed, today I do not know. not, " said the minister. Both agencies must "go back to the mothers, try to understand what commonalities can exist in all these families" .