OBJECTIVE To determine whether intrauterine growth retardation associated with normal umbilical artery blood flow is a benign condition. DESIGN A prospective comparative study of growth retarded fetuses with normal and abnormal umbilical artery blood flow. SETTING The fetal assessment clinic of a large maternity hospital in Ireland. PATIENTS 179 Women with singleton pregnancies in which t...

Early life exposure to ketamine caused neurohistopathologic changes and persistent cognitive dysfunction. For this study, a pregnant rat model was developed to investigate neurocognitive effects in the offspring, following ketamine exposure during the second trimester. Pregnant rats on gestational day 14 (equal to midtrimester pregnancy in humans), intravenously received 200 mg/kg ketamine for ...

Preterm delivery is the main cause of neonatal death and ultrasonographic cervical assessment has been shown to be more accurate than digital examination in recognizing a short cervix. This is a cross-sectional study, involving 1131 women at 22-24 weeks of pregnancy, designed to determine the distribution of cervical length and to examine which variables of demographic characteristics and obste...

Prenatal diagnosis was successfully accomplished by determining sphingomyelinase activity in the cultured amniotic fluid cells in a case of high risk pregnancy for Niemann-Pick disease (NPD), type A. No detectable activity of sphingomyelinase was found in the cultured amniotic fluid cells obtained at the 17th week of gestation. Patient's pregnancy was terminated and the aborted fetus was proved...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of extracorporeal magnetic innervation (ExMI) on pelvic muscle strength of primiparous patients. STUDY DESIGN Primigravid patients were randomized to receive either active or sham ExMI postpartum treatments for 8 weeks. The main outcome measure was pelvic muscle strength measured by perineometry at baseline (midtrimester), 6 wee...

The in vitro growth of early (burst-forming unit-megakaryocyte [BFU-meg]) and late (colony-forming unit-megakaryocyte [CFU-meg]) megakaryocyte progenitors was investigated in midtrimester human fetal blood and compared with adult bone marrow. Most of the experiments were performed in a serum-free fibrin-clot assay, using purified hematopoietic progenitor (CD34+) cells. High BFU-meg and CFU-meg ...

OBJECTIVE S100B is produced by glia of the central and peripheral nervous systems and is considered a marker of neurologic injury in the perinatal period. Indeed, increased neonatal urine S100B concentration is associated with adverse neurological outcomes including intraventricular hemorrhage and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, while elevated adult serum concentrations are associated with inf...

The large capillary mass of the newborn lung demands the presence of endothelial cell precursors in lung tissue before development of the pulmonary capillary bed. The objective of this investigation was to isolate and characterize putative endothelial cell precursors from developing human lung. CD34, a cell surface marker for hematopoietic progenitor cells, endothelial precursor cells, and smal...

Hyperglycosylated hCG (hCG-H) is a glycosylation variant of the hormone hCG. Here we review all that is known about this independently functioning molecule. As discussed, it is a very different molecule to the hormone hCG. First, hCG-H is produced by cytotrophoblast cells while regular hCG is made in syncytiotrophoblast cell. Second, it is an autocrine acting directly on the cells which produce...

 ABSTRACT Background: To compare pregnancy outcomes in women at risk for cervical incompetence after elective versus ultrasound- indicated cerclage. Methods: In a prospective randomized tlial, singleton pregnancies with at least one previous spontaneous midtrimester loss or early preterm delivery (between 15 and 32 weeks' gestation) who met clinical crite1ia for the diagnosis of cervical incomp...