BACKGROUND Preterm birth is the leading cause of child mortality under 5 years of age. Temporal trends in preterm birth rates are highly heterogeneous among countries and little information exists for China. To address this data gap, we investigated annual changes in preterm birth incidence rate and explored potential determinants of these changes in Shenzhen, China. METHODS A total of 1.4 mi...

Preterm Birth The majority of epidemiological studies in developmental programming have explored the influence of low birth weight (irrespective of gestational age) on long-term chronic disease in individuals born during the first half of the 20th century. Low birth weight neonates may represent infants born at term with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) or born preterm with or without IUG...

OBJECTIVE Individuals with inflammation have a myriad of pregnancy aberrations including increasing their preterm birth risk. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) and their ligands were all found to play a key role in inflammation. In the present study, we reviewed TLR and RAGE expression, their ligands, and signaling in preterm birth. RESEARCH DE...

AIM Our goal wasto produce a field synopsis of genetic associations with preterm birth and to set up a publicly available online database summarizing the data. METHODS We performed a systematic review and meta-analyses to identify genetic associations with preterm birth. We have set up a publicly available online database of genetic association data on preterm birth called PTBGene (http://ric...

Preterm birth causes 1 million infant deaths worldwide every year, making it the leading cause of infant mortality. Existing diagnostic tests such as transvaginal ultrasound or fetal fibronectin either cannot determine if preterm birth will occur in the future or can only predict the occurrence once cervical shortening has begun, at which point it is too late to reverse the accelerated parturit...

For ten years, the incidence of preterm birth does not decrease in developed countries despite the promotion of public health programs. Many risk factors have been identified including ethnicity, age, tobacco, and infection. However, almost 50% of preterm birth causes remain unknown. The periodontal diseases are highly prevalent inflammatory and infectious diseases of tooth supporting tissues l...

AIM To identify characteristic risk factors of preterm birth in Central and Eastern Europe and explore the differences from other developed countries. METHOD Data on 33,794 term and 3867 preterm births (<37 wks.) were extracted in a retrospective study between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2009. The study took place in 6 centers in 5 countries: Czech Republic, Hungary (two centers), Romani...

OBJECTIVE We reviewed the evidence for three theories of how preconceptional psychosocial stress could act as a contributing determinant of excess preterm birth risk among African American women: early life developmental plasticity and epigenetic programming of adult neuroendocrine systems; blunting, weathering, or dysfunction of neuroendocrine and immune function in response to chronic stress ...

BACKGROUND Evidence for protection of preterm born infants from invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) by 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccination (PCV7) is relatively sparse. Data from randomized trials is based on relatively small numbers of preterm born children. METHODS We report data from active prospective surveillance of IPD in children in Germany. The cohorts of preterm born children ...