Many studies have documented that placental development is altered by a variety of environmental factors which alter placental bed blood flow and/or oxygen delivery. One of these is sustained weight-bearing exercise. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of running throughout pregnancy on villous vascular development and cell proliferation by testing the null hypothesis t...

OBJECTIVE To investigate an approach for the analysis of samples obtained in screening for trisomy 21 that retains the advantages of quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (qf-PCR) over full karyotyping and maximises the detection of clinically significant abnormalities. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING Tertiary referral centre. SUBJECTS 17,446 pregnancies, from which chori...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Conventional cytogenetic studies have revealed more number of females in spontaneous abortion and it has been assumed that a large proportion of those were resulted from maternal contamination and overgrowth of maternal decidua in long term culture. In this study we have attempted to overcome difficulties of conventional cytogenetics by using meticulous tissue dissecti...

OBJECTIVE To analyse patient data to elucidate the apparent association between an abnormal karyotype and tricuspid regurgitation found during fetal echocardiography at early gestations. SETTING Tertiary referral centre for fetal medicine and cardiology. METHODS Fetuses between 11 and 14 weeks' gestation were selected for detailed echocardiography. Referral reasons were increased nuchal tra...

Introduction: Placental mesenchymal dysplasia (PMD) is a rare lesion, characterized by atypical placental development with placentomegaly, hydropic cystic stem villi formation and anomalous villous stroma and vessels. PMD fetuses are often normal. Because of this characteristics it is important to do the differential diagnosis among gestacional trophoblastic disease, Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome...

BACKGROUND Early placental and embryo development occur in a physiologically low oxygen environment, with a rise in oxygen tension within the placenta towards the end of the first trimester. Oxygen is implicated in the regulation of trophoblast differentiation and invasion. This study examined the effects of oxygen tension on extravillous trophoblast outgrowth and migration from normal pregnanc...

BACKGROUND Chorionic Villous Sampling (CVS) is a diagnostic method for determining genetic disorders. The present study aimed to determine the negative predictive value of the CVS in the diagnosis of major thalassemia in genetic laboratory of Dastgheib Hospital, Shiraz, Iran. METHODS The present research was an evaluation diagnostic test conducted on 372 records of embryos examined through CV...

Prenatal diagnosis of β-thalassemia was accomplished for the first time in the 1970s by globin chain synthesis analysis on fetal blood obtained by placental aspiration at 18-22 weeks gestation. Since then, the molecular definition of the β-globin gene pathology, the development of procedures of DNA analysis, and the introduction of chorionic villous sampling have dramatically improved prenatal ...