Carswell, F., and Ferguson, A. (1972). Archives of Disease in Childhood, 47, 594. Food antibodies in serum-a screening test for coeliac disease. Food antibody tests were performed on the sera of 52 children undergoing investigation for suspected coeliac disease. 30 of these were subsequently shown to have coeliac disease. The food antibody tests were at least as effective a screening test for c...

OBJECTIVE To develop a model for the prediction of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) from maternal characteristics and biochemical markers at 11 to 13 weeks' gestation. METHODS A prospective screening study on early prediction of pregnancy complications (n = 11, 464), including 297 (2.6%) cases of GDM was used to create the predictive model of GDM based on maternal characteristics. Maternal...

OBJECTIVE To examine the performance of screening for pre-eclampsia (PE) and gestational hypertension (GH) by a combination of maternal factors and various biophysical and biochemical markers at 11-13 weeks' gestation. METHODS This was a case-control study of 26 cases of early PE, 90 of late PE, 85 of GH and 201 unaffected controls. Maternal history was recorded, the uterine artery with the l...

OBJECTIVES Our primary objective was to determine the association of maternal serum analytes in pregnancies complicated by intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) stratified by umbilical artery (UA) Doppler versus pregnancies with appropriately grown for gestational age (AGA) and its potential use as screening model. METHODS Retrospective cohort evaluating first and second trimester maternal s...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of a universal maternal drug testing protocol for all mothers in a community hospital setting that experienced a 3-fold increase in neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) over the previous 5 years. STUDY DESIGN We conducted a retrospective cohort study between May 2012 and November 2013 after the implementation of universal maternal urine drug testing. All subje...

OBJECTIVE In contrast to the traditional teaching that the placenta forms an impermeable barrier, multiple studies show that both intact fetal cells and cell-free nucleic acids circulate freely in maternal blood. Complications of pregnancy, such as pre-eclampsia, or fetal cytogenetic abnormalities, such as trisomy 21, increase transfusion of both intact fetal cells and cell-free fetal nucleic a...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the potential value of maternal serum placental growth factor (PlGF) in first-trimester screening for pre-eclampsia (PE). METHODS The concentration of PlGF at 11 + 0 to 13 + 6 weeks' gestation was measured in samples from 127 pregnancies that developed PE, including 29 that required delivery before 34 weeks (early PE) and 98 with late PE, 88 cases of gestational hyper...