Background & aim: Recently, the use of birth ball in childbirth has been widely considered. This review study aimed to critically evaluate the evidence regarding the effect of using the birth ball on the mode of delivery and length of labor. Methods: For the purpose of the study, the articles related to the subj...

Background: The aim of this retrospective study is to investigate the cumulative live birth rate (CLBR) following one or more completed in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles (up to 6 cycles) stratified by maternal age and type of infertility. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, five hundred forty-seven women who received 736 fresh ovarian stimulation/embryo transfer cycles between...

The insulin gene variable number tandem repeat (INS-VNTR) is proposed to exert pleiotropic genetic effects on birth weight and diabetes susceptibility. In our study, we examined the influence of a polymorphism in tight linkage disequilibrium with INS-VNTR (-23Hph1) on birth weight and type 2 diabetes in the Pima population. A parent-offspring "trio" design was used to assess parent-of-origin ef...

We consider an exponentially growing cell populations modeled as a multi-type branching process in which type i cells are those with i ≥ 0 mutations and we let Zi(t) be the number of type i cells at time t. Type i cells give birth at rate ai and die at rate bi, where the growth rate λi = ai − bi > 0. Thinking of cancer we will usually restrict our attention to the case in which i → λi is increa...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether IGF-I promoter polymorphism was associated with birth weight and risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2DM), and whether the birth weight--risk factor relationship was the same for each genotype. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS 264 subjects (mean age 36 years) had data available on birth weight, IGF-I promoter polymorphism genotype, CVD a...

Objective About 1 % of infants are of very low birth weight. However, they comprise about 50% of infant mortality. We compare the effects of continuous versus intermittent feeding on physical growth, gastrointestinal tolerance and macronutrient retention in low birth weight infants (Methods A prospective randomized trial clinical trial was performed from 2004-2005. Very low birth weight neonate...