OBJECTIVES To estimate the ability of cervical length measured by transvaginal ultrasonography in asymptomatic high-risk women to predict spontaneous preterm birth. METHODS MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library were searched for articles published in any language between January 1980 and July 2006, using the keywords 'transvaginal ultrasonography' or ('cervix' and ('ultrasound' or ...

BACKGROUND Preterm birth is the primary cause of infant death worldwide. A short cervix in the second trimester of pregnancy is a risk factor for preterm birth. In specific patient cohorts, vaginal progesterone reduces this risk. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we undertook a prospective study in women at risk of preterm birth (n = 161) to assess (1) the relationship between vaginal microbiota ...

introduction: preterm birth is a risk factor for a number of conditions that requires comprehensive examination. our study was designed to investigate the impact of preterm birth on the processing of auditory stimuli and brain structures at the brainstem level at a preschool age.   materials and methods: an auditory brainstem response (abr) test was performed with low rates of stimuli in 60 chi...

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of preterm low birth weight on bone mineral content in adolescence. In 2007 to 2008, data on adolescents were obtained for study, including 16 females and 25 males who were born preterm (≤37 weeks' gestation) between October 1, 1989, and December 31, 1995, with a birth weight of less than 1850 g. Preterm low-birth-weight individuals were ...

Preterm birth remains a leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Numerous risk factors for preterm birth have been identified, including non-Hispanic black race, a variety of social and behavioral factors, infections, and history of a prior preterm delivery. Of these, a history of prior spontaneous preterm birth is one of the strongest risk factors. Traditionally,...

The events leading to preterm birth are still not completely understood. A quantitative systematic review was performed to estimate the effects of periodontal care during pregnancy on preventing preterm birth and low birth weight. The meta-analysis included randomized trials with pregnant women with a diagnosis of periodontal disease before 20 weeks of gestation. Relative risk (RR) with 95% con...

The Preterm Prediction Study conducted by the Maternal Fetal Medicine Network between 1993 and 1996 studied a large number of risk factors for preterm birth in more than 3,000 women at 10 centers. The goals of the study were to better understand the strength of one risk factor versus another and to explore interactions among the predictors looking for combinations of factors that were more pred...

Preterm birth has the highest mortality and morbidity of all pregnancy complications. The burden of preterm birth on public health worldwide is enormous, yet there are few effective means to prevent a preterm delivery. To date, much of its etiology is unexplained, but genetic predisposition is thought to play a major role. In the upcoming year, the international Preterm Birth Genome Project (PG...