BACKGROUND Preterm birth is an unresolved global health issue. The etiologies of preterm birth are complex and multifactorial. To examine risk factors related to preterm birth, a matched case-control study was conducted in a hospital in Beijing, China where little data on preterm birth have been published in the scientific literature. METHODS A 1:1 matched case-control study was conducted in ...

OBJECTIVES Arab Americans have a lower risk for preterm birth than white Americans. We assessed factors that may contribute to the association between ethnicity and preterm birth risk in Michigan, the state with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States. Factors assessed as potential contributors to the ethnicity/preterm birth risk association were maternal age, parity, e...

Preterm labour and prematurity are still a main cause of perinatal morbidity nowadays. The aim of our study was to assess the role of MMP-8 as a predictive marker of preterm delivery. Four groups of patients were involved to the study: I - pregnant women at 24-34 weeks of gestation with any symptoms of threatened preterm labour; II - threatened preterm labour patients between 24-34 weeks of ges...

Preterm birth interrupts normal fetal growth with consequences for postnatal growth and organ development. In preterm infants, many physiological deficits adapt and disappear with advancing postnatal age, but some may persist into childhood. We hypothesized that preterm birth would induce impaired organ growth and function during the first postnatal week in pigs, while motor abilities and behav...

Reduction of preterm births (<37 completed weeks of gestation) would substantially reduce neonatal and infant mortality, and deleterious health effects in survivors. Maternal fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure has been identified as a possible risk factor contributing to preterm birth. The aim of this study was to produce the first estimates of ambient PM2.5-associated preterm births for ...

BACKGROUND A previous study showed greater adhesion by platelets of healthy full term infants to subendothelial extracellular matrix (ECM) under flow conditions compared with healthy adult platelets. AIM To investigate the adhesion and aggregation of platelets from preterm infants on ECM under defined shear conditions. METHODS In vitro platelet function was investigated in 106 preterm infan...

BACKGROUND Few studies have differentiated risk factors for term-small for gestational age (SGA), preterm-appropriate for gestational age (AGA), and preterm-SGA, despite evidence of varying risk of child mortality and poor developmental outcomes. METHODS We analyzed birth outcome data from singleton infants, who were enrolled in a large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of ne...

There are well-established morbidities associated with preterm birth including respiratory, neurocognitive and developmental disorders. However several others have recently emerged that characterise an 'aged' phenotype in the preterm infant by term-equivalent age. These include hypertension, insulin resistance and altered body fat distribution. Evidence shows that these morbidities persist into...

BACKGROUND There is increasing evidence that lower maternal stature is associated with shorter gestational length in the offspring. We examined the association between maternal height and the likelihood of delivering preterm babies in a large and homogeneous cohort of Swedish women. METHODS This study covers antenatal data from the Swedish Medical Birth Register on 192,432 women (aged 26.0 ye...

BACKGROUND Low plasma folate concentrations in pregnancy are associated with preterm birth. Here we show an association between preconceptional folate supplementation and the risk of spontaneous preterm birth. METHODS AND FINDINGS In a cohort of 34,480 low-risk singleton pregnancies enrolled in a study of aneuploidy risk, preconceptional folate supplementation was prospectively recorded in th...