Tag: preterm

The rate of potentially fatal preterm births in Western Australian hospitals can be safely reduced by up to 20% when a coordinated series of interventions is applied to pregnant women, according to researchers at The University of Western Australia. The detailed research findings, published in PLOS ONE, reveal a 7.6% reduction in preterm births across the

Preterm birth is a leading cause of death among children under the age of five, with low resource countries facing the greatest challenge. But before solutions can be tested, researchers first need to be able to accurately measure the problem at a population level. This has been particularly difficult in countries where pregnant women don’t

For premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), skin-to-skin contact with parents influences levels of hormones related to mother-infant attachment (oxytocin) and stress (cortisol) – and may increase parents’ level of engagement with their infants, reports a study in Advances in Neonatal Care, official journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. Promoting

Two newly developed blood tests may help moms-to-be accurately answer this ever-popular question: When is your baby due? One blood test can predict gestational age and delivery date, while the other can flag some women who are at risk for premature delivery, according to a new study. However, both tests are still in the beginning

(HealthDay)—Different target ranges for oxygen saturation as measured by pulse oximetry (SpO2) do not affect the composite primary outcome of death or major disability for extremely preterm infants, according to research published in the June 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Lisa M. Askie, Ph.D., from the University of Sydney, and

Preterm labor, a common pregnancy complication, has long been a mystery to scientists. But a new study from UC San Francisco shows it may sometimes happen when the fetal immune system “wakes up” too early and begins to reject the mother, causing the uterus to start contracting. The researchers think the fetal immune system becomes