Corticosteroids' Effect on Fetal Lung Maturation (1972), by Sir Graham Collingwood Liggins and Ross Howie

In a clinical trial from 1969 to 1972, Sir Graham Collingwood Liggins and Ross Howie [4] showed that if doctors treat pregnant women with corticosteroids before those women deliver prematurely, then those womens' infants have fewer cases of respiratory distress syndrome [5] than do similarly premature infants of women not treated with corticosteroids. Prior to the study, premature infants born before 32 weeks of gestation [6] often died of respiratory distress syndrome [5], or the inability to inflate immature lungs. Liggins and Howie, then both at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand, published their results in ?A Controlled Trial of Antepartum Glucocorticoid Treatment for Prevention of the Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Premature Infants,? in 1972. The study built on Liggins's earlier experiments with sheep [7]. Liggins? corticosteroid experiments changed the way doctors treated pregnant women experiencing preterm labors, and they improved the life expectancies of prematurely born infants.