Concern about higher morbidity in late-preterm (34 0/7 to 36 weeks) infants has led to a flurry of recent publications with largely the same conclusions: latepreterm infants are more prone to problems related to delayed transition and overall immaturity, and they should therefore be treated differently than their more mature term counterparts. These observations have led to greater attention be...

Fetal life elapses in a relatively low oxygen environment. Immediately after birth with the initiation of breathing, the lung expands and oxygen availability to tissue rises by twofold, generating a physiologic oxidative stress. However, both lung anatomy and function and the antioxidant defense system do not mature until late in gestation, and therefore, very preterm infants often need respira...

BACKGROUND Fetuses-at-risk denominators are commonly used in research on preterm stillbirth, but applications to postnatal outcomes such as preterm infant mortality are controversial. We evaluated whether biased associations between maternal risk factors and preterm infant mortality caused by stratification by preterm birth could be avoided using fetuses-at-risk risk ratios. METHODS Data incl...

Most research on outcomes of preterm birth has centered on babies born at <32 weeks gestation and at highest risk of mortality and serious morbidity. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in studies focusing on late preterm infants (34-36 weeks gestation). Early epidemiological studies demonstrated increased risks of mortality and adverse neonatal outcomes in this group, prompting further ...

In spite of increased appreciation that all preterm infants and early term infants are at higher risk for mortality and morbidities compared with their term counterparts, there are many knowledge gaps affecting optimal clinical care for this vulnerable population. This article presents a research agenda focusing on the systems biology, epidemiology, and clinical and translational sciences on th...

BACKGROUND Threatened preterm labor is a leading cause of hospital admission during pregnancy. Patients with an episode of threatened preterm labor who deliver at term are considered to have false preterm labor. However, threatened preterm labor has been proposed as a pathologic insult that is not always sufficient to induce irreversible spontaneous preterm birth but that could alter the normal...

Late-preterm newborns accounted for 8.7% of all US births in 2009, while in Italy, according to Euro-Peristat Report 2010, rate of preterm live births between 32 and 36 weeks accounts for 6.4%: therefore late-preterm incidence is around 5% [1]. In the literature is reported that late preterm infants are at increased risk of neonatal mortality and morbidity, including feeding problems, hyperbili...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Previous studies suggest that former late preterm infants are at increased risk for learning and behavioral problems compared with term infants. These studies have primarily used referred clinical samples of children followed only until early school age. Our objective was to determine the cumulative incidence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learni...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of gestational age, particularly late preterm birth (34-36 weeks gestation) and early term birth (37-38 weeks gestation) on school performance at age 7 years. DESIGN Population-based prospective UK Millennium Cohort Study, consisting of linked educational data on 6031 children. METHODS School performance was investigated using the statutory Key Stage 1 (K...