Oxygen dissociation curves of maternal and fetal bloods prepared in vitro have been described in several species including the goat.' The use of recent polarographic methods for measuring oxygen tension in blood avoids any possible alteration in oxygen affinity of the blood during equilibration in tonometers and could theoretically result in more accurate maternal and fetal oxygen dissociation ...

Development of prognostic biomarkers for the detection of prenatally damaged neurons before manifestations of postnatal disorders is an essential step for prevention and treatment of susceptible individuals. We have developed a versatile fluorescence reporter system in mice enabling detection of Heat Shock Factor 1 activation in response to prenatal cellular damage caused by exposure to various...

OBJECTIVES To determine, in women transferred antenatally for acute admission with high risk pregnancies, the numbers who deliver, the average time from transfer to delivery, and whether the reason for transfer influences the time-to-delivery. METHODS A retrospective analysis of time-to-delivery was performed in a population of women transferred to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, QLD...

Human CMV infection, the most common virus infection of the fetus and neonate, can occur in utero as "congenital infection" or during the first weeks of life as "perinatal infection." Congenital infection presents either as clinically apparent or as silent infection. Perinatal CMV infection is a common form of CMV acquisition and produces minimal, if any, disease in the full-term infant. The re...

Females of many species adaptively program their offspring to predictable environmental conditions, a process that is often mediated by hormones. Laboratory studies have shown, for instance, that social density affects levels of maternal cortisol and testosterone, leading to fitness-relevant changes in offspring physiology and behaviour. However, the effects of social density remain poorly unde...

Due to the low occurrence of cancer during pregnancy, limited data are available about outcome of infants exposed to chemotherapy in utero. We report the case of a newborn who developed transient ventricular hypocinesia and late-onset infection after in utero exposure to four epirubicin cycles for pregnancy-associated breast cancer. Moreover, we provide an overview of literature on neonatal out...

Developmental neurotoxicity constitutes effects occurring in the offspring primarily as a result of exposure of the mother during pregnancy and lactation. To exert their effect, these chemicals or their metabolites must pass the placenta and/or the blood-brain barrier. In experimental animals, exposure to neurotoxic chemicals during critical periods of brain development has induced permanent fu...

BACKGROUND Fetal surgery, also referred to as in utero, prenatal or intrauterine surgery, consists of treatment of congenital malformations during the fetal period. The idea of treating malformations diagnosed in the course of intrauterine life dates back to 1963, when Lilly performed the first blood transfusion in a fetus. Since then it has been introduced as a treatment option in a series of ...

In this report we describe two cases of fetal midline intracranial cyst presenting with ventriculomegaly at routine detailed second-trimester scan. In the first case, additional findings included a banana-shaped hypoplastic cerebellum and macrocephaly; autopsy after termination of the pregnancy revealed a glioependymal cyst. In the second case, subsequent follow-up examination revealed a progre...

The stereotyped positions occupied by individual classes of neurons are a fundamental characteristic of CNS cytoarchitecture. To study the regulation of neuronal positioning, we injected genetically labeled neural precursors derived from dorsal and ventral mouse forebrain into the telencephalic vesicles of embryonic rats. Cells from both areas were found to participate in the generation of tele...