Dr. Jean Brender This is Me

Education

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1. 1. www.themonitor.com

   www.themonitor.com/news/defect - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/12/2007   Last Visited: 8/13/2007

   The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences awarded a $1.4 million grant to Jean Brender, associate professor with the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, to study how some medications and nitrates and nitrites in food and water are linked to birth defects.
   
   Nitrates and nitrites are nitrogen- and oxygen-based chemical compounds commonly found in fertilizers. They have also been linked to birth defects, Brender said.
   
   The center will collaborate with several universities and the Texas Department of State Health Services to study birth defects cases in 10 states including Texas.
   
   Brender said she began looking into the issue in the 1990s when she learned that many babies born along the Texas-Mexico border had birth defects, including neural tube defects, oral clefts and encephalitis. Hidalgo County was included in the original study.
   
   She and other researchers tested water the mothers drank, public water supplies, food the women ate and medications they took, to test nitrate and nitrite levels.
   
   "All of us are exposed to nitrates - (which are found in) vegetables - and nitrites - (which are found in) meats," Brender said.
   
   But the researchers learned that pregnant women who took medications, primarily antibiotics and cold medicine, with food and water were more likely to have babies with neural tube defects, she said.
   
   Brender said the first study looked at a few hundred women who had babies born with defects.
   
   With the new study, researchers plan to study 5,000 to 7,000 women, including 800 to 1,000 who have children with neural tube defects, she said.
   
   "We're talking about thousands of women, as opposed to hundreds," Brender said.

2. 2. fridayletter.asph.org

   fridayletter.asph.org/printing - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/3/2007   Last Visited: 8/15/2007

   Dr. Jean Brender, associate professor with the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, recently was awarded more than $1.4 million to study the effect of certain medications, nitrates and nitrites in food and water, and the combined effect of these exposures on the risk of birth defects, the leading cause of infant deaths in the United States.
   
   Dr. Brender received $1.424 million for four years from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
   
   "This new study builds upon and expands our previous research on the relation between nitrates, nitrites, and nitrosatable drugs and neural tube defects in the Texas-Mexico border population," Dr. Brender said.

3. 3. Public health workers take the pulse of the population: 11/ 23/ 2004

   www.s-t.com/daily/11-04/11-23- - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/25/2006   Last Visited: 3/25/2006

   No matter how students jump-start their careers, "if you really want to improve people's health and provide a service to others, it's a great field to go into," said Jean Brender, an associate professor of health services research at Texas State University in San Marcos. Brender spent 13 years working for the Texas Department of State Health Services. She continues to assist former colleagues in research on birth defects. "I've been able to involve students in that work as well," said Brender, 52, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in nursing and a doctorate in epidemiology. This year, one of her students was the second author of an article in a prestigious journal, Epidemiology, while another was a co-author. "I've had students come to my office and say, 'I want to do exactly what you do,"' she said.