There is no question that the number of women using and abusing nonnarcotic drugs far exceeds the number who are addicted to narcotics (Chambers and Hart 1977). Current data show that 63% to 93.5% of women use analgesics during pregnancy and that sedative drug use ranges from 22% to 28% (Doering and Stewart 1978; Forfar and Nelson 1973; Hill 1973). However, until recently, little attention has ...

An evolving challenge for obstetrician is to better define normal and abnormal fetal neurological function in utero, in order to better predict antenatally which fetuses are at risk for adverse neurological outcome. Especially the diagnosis of cerebral palsy remains one of the most difficult and challenging clinical situations in obstetrics. The fact that a large number of cerebral damage occur...

CONTEXT Most of the U.S. population is exposed to the high-production-volume chemical bisphenol A (BPA), but targetable sources of exposure remain to be determined. Animal studies and one human study suggest that BPA is a neurotoxicant. CASE PRESENTATION A mother in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment (HOME) Study, a prospective birth cohort examining prenatal and postnatal en...

OBJECTIVE Increased risk of psychopathology is observed in children exposed to maternal prenatal distress, and elevated maternal cortisol and epigenetic regulation of placental glucocorticoid-pathway genes are potential mechanisms. The authors examined maternal distress and salivary cortisol in relation to fetal movement and heart rate ("coupling") and DNA methylation of three glucocorticoid pa...

Repeated subcutaneous (s.c.) injection is a common route of administration in chronic studies of neuroactive compounds. However, in a pilot study we noted a significant incidence of skin abnormalities in adult male Long-Evans rats receiving daily s.c. injections of peanut oil (1.0 ml/kg) in the subscapular region for 21 d. Histopathological analyses of the lesions were consistent with a foreign...