Editing Brownsville, Texas (section)

====Public Health====
In the spring of 1991, a cluster of [[anencephaly]] cases in the area made national headlines,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Xiao |first=Emily |date=July 2023 |title=Lessons from Brownsville's anencephaly cluster |url=https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)01318-1 |journal=The Lancet |volume=402 |issue=10395 |pages=17–19 |doi=10.1016/s0140-6736(23)01318-1 |pmid=37393913 |s2cid=259290246 |issn=0140-6736}}</ref> prompting a public health investigation. A high anencephaly rate, of 19.7 per 10,000 live births, was found. Additionally, it was discovered that other [[neural tube defect]]s, including [[spina bifida]] and [[encephalocele]], had been an ongoing, undetected issue in pregnant Mexican-American women for years in the area.<ref name="mmwr">{{Cite journal |last=Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) |date=January 14, 2000 |title=Neural tube defect surveillance and folic acid intervention--Texas-Mexico border, 1993-1998 |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10993565 |journal=MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=1–4 |issn=0149-2195 |pmid=10993565}}</ref> Subsequently, multiple [[risk factor]]s were found, such as [[folate deficiency]], and that increasing dietary folate intake had a protective effect.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Suarez |first1=Lucina |last2=Felkner |first2=Marilyn |last3=Brender |first3=Jean D. |last4=Canfield |first4=Mark |last5=Zhu |first5=Huiping |last6=Hendricks |first6=Katherine A. |date=November 2012 |title=Neural tube defects on the Texas-Mexico border: What we've learned in the 20 years since the Brownsville cluster |journal=Birth Defects Research Part A: Clinical and Molecular Teratology |volume=94 |issue=11 |pages=882–892 |doi=10.1002/bdra.23070|pmid=22945287 |doi-access=free}}</ref>