Could painkillers cause you to give birth to a one-eyed baby?

One-eyed babies are real, and Nigeria has one. The one-eyed Cyclops in the ‘Seven Voyages of Sinbad’ is a thing of fiction and myth, but it is real. Some babies are born with one eye, and Nigeria has had its own birth.

Experts in obstetrics and gynaecology at Ahmadu Bello University, Shika, Zaria documented a case report of cyclopia—a rare congenital condition in which a baby is born with one eye.

The exact cause of cyclopia isn’t known, but risk factors range from maternal diabetes and infections to use of alcohol and aspirin, anticonvulsants and anti cancer agents.

It occurs when the forebrain fails to completely cleave in separate left and right hemispheres. With this the orbit of the eye also fails to divide into two cavities.

The condition is estimated to occur in one out of every 16,000 live births and is lethal.

Their report, presented in the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology last December in Sokoto, calls for further studies on the role of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

NSAIDs are the most common and often prescribed painkillers on pharmacy shelves —from Ibuprofen and aspirin to piroxicam.

The case was simply named “Mrs MS”, after a 36-year-old woman in her third pregnancy after two previous births.

She was 34 weeks along when she presented at the hospital. Her water had broken five hours earlier and she had been in labour for three hours.

No scans for anomalies were carried out, the authors of the report note, and MS had taken piroxicam for three days in the first trimester of her pregnancy to treat a condition.

She gave birth to a baby girl who weighed 3.2kg. The baby’s head was 35cm around. Her eye orbit was a partially divided single midline where two eyes should have been. Above it was a proboscis

She had no nose, had more than five fingers or toes and spina bifida (that’s when the backbone and membranes around the spinal cord don’t close completely).

The baby died within 15 minutes, and her parents declined an autopsy.

“Cyclopia is said to occur sporadically. However, NSAIDs are among the complicated risk factors which Mrs MS had in the first trimester. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and autopsy all add to the diagnosis of cyclopia but were not done however,” the two experts, Anyebe SS and Oguntayo OA, wrote in their report.

But their physical findings were consistent with cyclopia.

It isn’t certain if this birth is the first case of cyclopia in Nigeria but it is on record for being documented in a journal.

It could have been diagnosed early in the pregnancy by ultrasound scan, said the experts, highlighting the importance of prenatal investigation. Ultrasound scans are capable of showing a proboscis growing out of the skull.

“Awareness of this congenital anomaly is important to enable report when it occurs,” wrote the researchers.