OESTROGENS IN BOVINE FETAL AND MATERNAL PLASMA NEAR TERM

Near-term fetal response to maternal spoken voice.

Knowledge about prenatal learning has been largely predicated on the observation that newborns appear to recognize the maternal voice. Few studies have examined the process underlying this phenomenon; that is, whether and how the fetus responds to maternal voice in situ. Fetal heart rate and motor activity were recorded at 36 weeks gestation (n = 69) while pregnant women read aloud from a neutr...

Size distributions of maternal and fetal DNA in maternal plasma.

BACKGROUND The discovery of fetal DNA in maternal plasma has opened up an approach for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Despite the rapid expansion in clinical applications, the molecular characteristics of plasma DNA in pregnant women remain unclear. METHODS We investigated the size distribution of plasma DNA in 34 nonpregnant women and 31 pregnant women, using a panel of quantitative PCR ass...

Conjugated and unconjugated oestrogens in fetal and maternal fluids of the cow throughout pregnancy.

The changes in concentration of oestrone, oestradiol (-17alpha and -17beta), oestrone sulphate and the oestradiol sulphates have been measured in allantoic and amniotic fluids and in maternal peripheral plasma throughout gestation. Oestrone sulphate was the major oestrone present in all of the fluids. It was measurable in allantoic fluid before Day 52 and reached a peak concentration of 475 ng/...

Fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma.

The discovery of cell-free fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma has opened up new possibilities for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Over the last few years, a number of approaches have been demonstrated to allow such circulating fetal nucleic acids to be used for the prenatal detection of chromosomal aneuploidies. One such approach involves the enrichment of fetal DNA, such as by size fractio...

Presence of fetal RNA in maternal plasma.