This resulted in 13 genes that were comparable to each other (97.5% in NTD cases vs 95.7% in controls; t test P‐value = 0.13, 2‐tailed), and 8 of these genes (COBL, FAT4, MTRR, PDGFRA, PRICKLE2, SALL4, TCN2 and TXN2) had at least 1 rare/novel variant predicted to be damaging which could be used for further analysis. Here, COBL is linked to neural tube defect.