A range of health effects, including adverse pregnancy outcomes, have been associated with exposure to ambient concentrations of particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O3). The objective of this study was to determine whether maternal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and O3 during pregnancy is associated with the risk of term low birthweight and small for gestational age infants in both ...

Diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) is one of the most widely utilized phthalate plasticizers. Previous studies have demonstrated that gestational or postnatal DEHP exposure induced adverse effects on rat brain development and function. In this study, we investigated the effects of gestational DEHP exposure on gene expression profiling in neonatal rat brain and cognitive function change at adulthood....

In humans, psittacosis is primarily a flulike illness following exposure to psittacine birds. In rare cases, pregnant women exposed to Chlamydia psittaci can contract gestational psittacosis: atypical pneumonia, sepsis, and placental insufficiency resulting in premature birth or miscarriage. In the United States, only two cases of gestational psittacosis have been reported, both from exposure t...

BACKGROUND Fever and infections are common events during pregnancy, and have been shown to be associated with neurodevelopmental impairment in the offspring. The evidence in relation to attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is, however, nonexistent for fever and limited for infections. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the impact of these exposures on the occurrence o...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have suggested gestational weeks 8-14 as a time window of particular importance to the intrauterine development of the male genitalia, and prenatal exposure to alcohol is under suspicion as a risk factor for cryptorchidism. We examined if prenatal exposure to alcohol, and especially binge drinking, during the suggested programming window is associated with an increased...

The objective of this study was to determine drug use in newborns at an inborn tertiary care neonatal intensive care unit, serving a predominantly African American population, to identify educational/research priorities in neonatal drug therapy. Data on demographics and exposure rates to all drugs from 6839 neonates born between January 1997 and June 2004 were analyzed. Number of drugs used was...